Darkest Side of Black
by Ophium
Summary: While hunting a Chupacabra in the outskirts of the Mojave Desert, the brothers are separated by a sandstorm. Alone and lost in the hot and unforgiving desert, Dean finds himself attacked by more than sun and sand. Set in Season 3. Read warnings inside.
1. Prologue

**PLEASE READ THIS.**.. it's kind of important!

**Warnings:** Before you move any further, let me tell you what this story will bring. There will be sexual assault of the supernatural-male variety; there will be male-pregnancy (of sorts); there will be character death (but given that this is set in season 3, you can pretty much guess who its going to be) and there will be much angst and swearing and general misery. This is not a tale for kids... this is not a tale for the squirmy.

With that being said, let me tell you what this story IS about. Its about dreams, and nightmares; its about hope and wishes; its about love and lost.

The whole idea of doing something of the m-preg variety came from **Farscapefan**, a wonderfully generous fan who decided to donate to the Doctors Without Borders cause. In return, I promised to write whatever she wanted. I have to say, she presented me with quite the challenge. For those of you who have ever read any of my stories, you know that this is as far off from my usual turf as it can get :O) ... Which is the same as saying that I'm having a blast pushing myself beyond my comfort zone!

I've read a couple of m-preg stories before. I have to be honest, I didn't like them all that much. Men and pregnancy simply do not mingle in my mind and either Dean or Sam actying all hormonal and lady-like... not my cup of tea. And then I heard the tale of Sanju Bahagat, an Indian man who carried the body of his twin brother inside of him for 36 years, and I thought... wait a tic! I think I can pull this off in a believable and very different way from what I've seen so far.

So, there popped along Darkest Side of Black.

Because of the fact that I'll be busy writing my Big Bang story for the next couple of months, the updates of this story won't be as fast as my previous stories. So far, I have around 4 to 5 chapters of it ready to go, chapters that I will try to spread evenly through that time, so that there is, at least, one update a month.

To my beta, **Jackfan2**, my undying gratitude, because despite the fact she's not the biggest fan of this genre, she still stayed at my side. All remaining mistakes are, of course, mine.

**DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

PRO//(o|o)\\LOGUE

It wasn't exactly a bucket list, mainly because Sam would flip if he ever heard Dean call it a bucket list, but it was a _checklist_ of things Dean wanted to do before the hellhounds came knocking. Just in case.

So, Dean had his inventory, a secret one from where he would occasionally cross out an item. In it were the more usual, _normal_ things that he could actually do if he'd take the time to do them, like visit the Grand Canyon; or check into a five star, honest-to-god, all the fuzz and gush, hotel. In it were the other _normal_ things, things that everyone took for granted and that he would never get to do, like growing old or have a kid.

Other items weren't _normal_ at all. Like hunting a Chupacabra.

As far as hunting went, Chupacabras weren't even that much of a big deal; just your run-of-the-mill, mutant animal sucking the blood of some farmers' unsuspicious livestock. Usually, hunters –their kind of hunters- didn't bother much with hunting the things, which was why neither Sam nor Dean had ever even seen one.

John made some vague mentions of hunting one, back in the day, when Dean was still too young to go on hunts with him, but the whole thing was hardly worthy of a half-page in his journal.

When Dean mentioned that they should hunt one, Sam had eyed him at length, eyes squinting in what was probably meant to be a do-not-bullshit-me gaze, but ended up looking like a bad case of stomachache. Inevitably, though, the sour look dissolved into one of agreement because yes, it would be fun to hunt something that wasn't likely to hunt them back and that was as far from demons and their shenanigans as one could possibly get.

Of course, it hadn't hurt that a Chupacabra had been sighted on the outskirts of the Mojave Desert, which provided Sam with a not-so-inconspicuous-as-he-thought alibi to arrange a meeting with one of the few Cahuilla Indians living outside a reservation. It was also just their luck that this particular Native American man happened to be an expert where it came to deals with supernatural beings.

In fact, it had been Dean's unplanned snooping around of his brother's computer and his stumbling across a reference to the Mojave that had clued him in on the existence of the Chupacabra sightings and where to go next.

In the end, both brothers were a bit unclear on who had tricked whom. Which made the fact that they were now both baking under the hot sun, in the Mojave Desert, in the middle of September, while standing guard over a stuffed lamb, their own collective fault.

"This is stupid," Dean let out, taking off the blue bandana he had over his head to protect his boiling brain, and used it to wipe the sticky sweat trickling down his face and neck.

"_This_ was your idea," Sam reminded him, looking progressively red under his white shirt and gray bandana. Seeing Dean wipe out his sweaty neck was enough to compel Sam to run his sleeve over his own face, uselessly taking out the dampness that would take about five seconds to pool all over again.

Dean took a swing out of his lukewarm water bottle to avoid taking a swing at his brother. Not that Sam was completely without reason.

According to what they'd dug up and the few notes in dad's journal, the way to catch a Chupacabra was by luring it in with bait, usually a lamb or a goat, the things' favorite nibbles, and then cut off its head.

Dean had flat out refused to take a live animal into the middle of the desert, only to tie it to a post and wait to die. And no matter how much Dean said it was because of the mess the animal would make in his car, Sam knew better.

So, they'd tried the Winchester's version of Chupacabra bait: a stuffed, big assed fake lamb, covered in the real thing's blood, tied to a wooden stake –that would usually be serving as a zombie nail- and stuck on top of a dune. Lore didn't said much about it, but they were hoping that the Chupacabra would be near-sighted enough to not tell the difference until it was too late.

Either the Chupacabra had better eyes than what they'd given it credit for, or it was just too damn hot for it to come out and play.

Dean was starting to believe that out of the three of them, the mutant supernatural beast sucking on goats' necks might've been the smart one.

No matter how much water they drank, the feeling of sand down their throats never seemed to wane. It was like a direct link had been established between their mouths and their skin and everything they drank leaked out almost immediately without spending time enough inside to quench their thirst.

They were tired, cranky, achy and on the downhill side of a very bad sunburn, even though Dean could still sort of see the white wisps of sunscreen that Sam had applied abundantly over his nose. If he crossed his eyes hard enough, Dean could see the same white mess on his nose too.

Dean tried to stop himself from smiling at the memory. It was one more to add to his growing collection; the collection that he would never admit to, because it was massively girly and emo, but that was his none-the-less. And like the bucket list that wasn't a bucket list at all, Sam would never hear a whisper about the 'moments' collection'.

Like a coin collector, Dean was gathering all those moments and feelings and carefully setting them apart, perfectly safe in little pockets of memory, conserved for eternity. Those small events that were a part of their day-to-day routine and meant nothing more than brothers being brothers, of family acting as family, but that were, in the gloomy shadowing of his future as Hell's tenant, becoming more and more precious.

Moments when he could look after Sam and not have his brother bitch about it; moments when Sam tried to look out for him and Dean could bitch endlessly.

Like the small matter of putting on sun block before leaving the motel that morning. Dean had teased Sam endlessly because of it, claiming that, as long as they were at it, they should break out the nail polish and curl out their hair. Sam had put on his bitch face, along with generous portions of the white cream stuff on his face, warning Dean about the dangers of being mistaken for a lobster in a hungry crowd; Dean had teased about nail polish and looking pretty, but had been forced to concede the point when Sam threw a glob of the stuff at his face anyway. If anything, Sam had very good _arguments_.

For a couple of minutes, before grabbing their guns and their fake, stuffed lamb and driving off into the desert to kill one more monster, they had laughed and been silly, having a Winchester equivalent of a cream pie fight. The sunscreen tube had been utterly useless afterwards, but it had been fun while it lasted.

Like most times, adding one more happy memory to his stock sent Dean in a downright spiral of concern and depression, reminding him why he was doing it and what would happen afterwards.

In just a matter of months, Dean would be dead and there would be no one around to keep Sam grounded.

Dean was perfectly aware that his brother could take care of himself and survive on his own. Hell! On some days, Sam could take care of them both better than Dean ever could.

He could survive on his own. But he couldn't live alone.

Dean had seen the consequences of the months Sam had spent alone, hunting on his own, believing that Dean was dead already, courtesy of the trickster.

In the following weeks after leaving Broward County and the mystery spot behind, Dean could easily see through his brother's struggle to reconnect with his emotions, to reengage his feelings and stop being the cold and detached man that he had been thus far.

Something very crucial and _human_ had broken inside Sam when he was left alone, something that changed him into a much worse version of the destructive and obsessed hunter that their father had been.

Bobby would be there for him, Dean also knew that. But Bobby was like a solid rock while Sam was more like an angry ocean. Sam would occasionally cross paths with the older man, but he would never stick around long enough to let himself be comforted and grounded.

Sam needed someone with him, someone to take care of and to keep his heart rooted and bleeding. Without his bleeding heart, Sam wasn't Sam.

Dean needed to stay with Sam, but he was the only one who couldn't.

"I say we call it a day and try to get this sucker at night. I don't care what lore says about them hunting only by day... there's no way that mother is doing any work in this dam-"

Dean cut himself short. The desert was surprisingly noisy, something that he hadn't expected. Small animals, invisible for the most part, scurried around, minding their own business and producing a low-grade cacophony of sound; dry bushes bounced to the whims of the wind, producing raspy sounds of their own; and the birds, eagles and vultures for the most part, soaring above in turns and cackling amongst each other.

The silence that suddenly settled all over that part of the desert was massive in its intrusion and wrongness.

Dean looked at his brother, searching his face to see if the geek in Sam had some answer for what the hell was going on or if he was just as clueless as Dean. The way Sam's eyes grew wide before his mouth slowly dropped open told of some really fucked up shit happening somewhere behind Dean. He couldn't help but turn and see for himself.

It was like the ground had reached up to touch the sky and the world had suddenly turned yellow from top to bottom.

It was more instinct than strategy, the way both Sam and Dean's hands reached for each other, fingers convulsing around the other's wrist, grabbing on to the only thing around that could provide any sort of solid shelter.

"Dean..." Sam whispered, his eyes still fixed on the rapidly approaching menace, unable to unglue his gaze from it for even one second. And it wasn't like he needed to look at his brother to know that he was there and that neither of them was going anywhere.

The car was parked at least two miles away, where the sorry excuse for a road around those parts, ended. The gargantuan wall of sand was moving too fast; there was no way they could make it to the car in time.

The wood post that they'd pounded into the sandy ground and strapped the fake lamb to, was barely standing on its own and would be of absolutely no use if they tried to use it as an anchor.

Dean's only answer was to grasp his fingers tighter around his brother's cotton shirt and pull them both down. The smaller the body surface they offered to the fast coming storm, the better, he figured.

Sam followed him down without a word, jerking the bandana in his head down and adjusting it with shaky fingers around his mouth and nose instead. From the corner of his eyes, Sam could see Dean doing exactly the same.

The brothers kneeled on the sand, legs braced against a force that they could not measure but could easily guess to be impressive; they stood like penitents, waiting for some sentence from high above, eyes set and jaws locked, trying to steel themselves to what was coming. No amount of preparing, no abundance of stoicism could stop either of them from screaming when the sand storm hit them.

It was like being eaten alive by a thousand bees, swirling, stinging, stealing their breath away. The sound of the sand filled winds was deafening, like an old vacuum cleaner, plugged right in their ears.

When they instinctively reach with their hands up, in a feeble attempt to protect their ears, both Sam and Dean knew they'd made a mistake.

Through the thick wall of sand and dirt, they'd already lost sight of one another. Now, with their arms crossed over their heads, they couldn't feel each other.

Sam was alone in his world of sand and blindness and all he could hope for was that, at least one of the shadows surrounding him, was his brother.

The transition from seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing but the whipping pain of sand in his skin and being blinded by an unforgiving bright blue sky was so sudden that Sam barely registered when it happened. His body was still reacting to the last wave of battering assault and only when the hot air of the desert hit the raw flesh of his arms did he snapped from the fresh memory of pain to the reality of its absence.

Sam coughed, a raspy feeling scratching his throat as sand made the reverse way from his lungs back to the desert. He clawed his fingers at his chest, wanting nothing more than reach beyond the barrier of skin with his nails and clean out all the dirt that he could feel inside.

The lack of any other coughing sounds other than his own registered as soon as Sam could draw in some air.

"De- cough- DD--n?" Sam croaked. He looked around, forcing his eyes to work through the veil of tears. "DeeANNN?!"

The whole desert had changed. The dunes had shifted further away; replaced by valleys just as deep as they'd been high, with Joshua trees that hadn't been there before, blossoming out of the sand. The post and the stuffed lamb that they'd stuck to the ground were nowhere to be seen.

And neither was Dean.

Sam ran a hand over his hair, closing his eyes against the downpour of sand that the gesture released. He could feel panic building up inside his chest. Any of those mounts of sand could be his brother, his suffocating brother.

And unless Dean was alert enough to call him back, Sam would have to search them all.

TBC


	2. Chapter 1

Once more, please read all warnings in the Prologue before proceeding. All the nasty stuff I talked about there? Happens IN THIS chapter, so, BEWARE! Chapter 2 will be posted on the 18th of March. In the mean time, enjoy!

CHAPTER //(o|o)\\ ONE

Dean felt himself roll away. He tried to scream for Sam, to grab on to something, but in the mayhem of the sand storm, both gestures were equally pointless.

And then there was no point in even trying. After the first five flip topples that left him feeling dizzy and nauseous, Dean felt his body lose all contact with the ground. Soon after, even reality was escaping his grasp.

Dean woke up with the crusty feeling of sand in his mouth. His nose felt clogged up, like he had snot up to his brain, but nothing was coming out. He coughed, trying to dislodge at least one of the uncomfortable feelings. The only thing that he managed was to somehow pop his ears, like he's just passed a sound barrier.

His chest joined the party, lungs stinging and contracting, like breathing was something new for them, like they had forgotten how to do it even though that was the only thing they'd been doing ever since Dean had come, blearing and screaming, out of his mother's—

'_Where the fuck am I?_' Dean thought, mind drifting away from warm thoughts of his mother's touch and crashing back into the harsh reality where the whole world was yellow around him and he could see nothing but sand around him.

Pushing his hands against the soft ground, Dean groaned as his battered body slowly raised, the only shadow for miles being the one that he was making between his chest and the sand. "Fuck!"

They had made sure to arrive with plenty of time and take care of the Chupacabra in the wee hours of the morning, so disgustingly early that not even the sun was decently up. That sort of not-quite-day hour, when it was already light enough to forego the use of flashlights but still chill enough to avoid getting baked in the desert sun.

By the time the sand storm had hit them, temperature had already started to climb in to dangerously uncomfortable numbers, even though Winter was just a couple of months away.

Now, as Dean squinted his eyes to try and make out any sense of his broken watch, he could easily guess that the sun had moved from lazily warm to hot as hell. And he had no frigging idea where he was.

It didn't help that the only landmark that he could see for miles in any direction was the short and pathetic hills west of where he was, hills that, by the way, he would swear hadn't even been there before. The compass in his watch was just as broken as the rest of the thing, but the sun was still climbing up in the sky, coming from his left, which made that east. His car was somewhere in that direction and, hopefully, Sam with it.

Turning his back on the distant hills, because standing there like a lost palm tree wasn't really gonna do it, Dean started walking east, feet dragging over sand and leaving dark indentations that the wind wasted no time to wipe out.

Dean ran a dry tongue over chapped lips. It felt like he'd been walking for days, even though he knew that, in reality, it couldn't have been more than a couple of hours. Enough time to have the sun beating heat move to stand directly above him.

The whole frigging desert looked exactly the same no matter how many dunes he climbed up and stumbled down, making Dean feel like he hadn't even left the same place at all.

The bandana that had been protecting his head from the blare of the sun before, had gone missing around the same time that Dean's perception of time and space had, literally, '_gone with the wind'_. He could feel his brain swell and boil inside his head, as he angrily wiped the sweat that trickled down the sides of his neck, wondering when one of those wipes would turn out to be melted brain instead of water.

The skin at the back of his neck felt like it was on fire.

By the tenth time he stumbled on absolutely nothing, just because his right and left foot kept getting crossed inside his head, Dean figured that enough was enough and he took his shirt off. He was feeling too hot with it on anyways and, even though the lack of shirt didn't exactly do much for his temperature, Dean could at least use the soaked through fabric to protect his head.

It didn't help with the stumbling.

Five minutes after taking his shirt off, Dean could already feel the skin across his back and arms stretching too thin, red and sensitive as the sun punished him without pity.

The walking forward had slowly evolved into some sort of staggering forward; the search for Sam, the road, the car, any thing but sand, had narrowed down to finding a shade, any kind of mercy from the heat beating down his back viciously.

His whole body was slowly rebelling in him. Dean couldn't even trust his eyes anymore. More than once now, he could've sworn that he'd seen rock formations at a short distance. Or his car. Or a fucking ice cream truck that, for some reason, he'd already imagined a couple of times. Every time he thought he was getting near something –anything- only sand greeted him. Sand, and sand and some more sand.

The sun, steadily reaching its highest point, was only getting hotter, like the distant star was personally pleased to see the little ant burn under its magnifying lenses.

Dean didn't even want to think about how thirsty he was. There was no point. He had gone past the stage of sandy mouth, gums sticking to his lips and crossed over to some painful stage where his stomach would cramp like crazy at the mere thought of anything remotely liquid. Dean would've gladly licked the sweat off his own skin, but his skin was being a selfish prick that no longer even dignified itself to produce sweat, like proper skins did.

Somewhere deep inside Dean's head, between one stabbing ache and another, he knew that that was a bad thing. The whole 'not sweating' thing. From what he could remember, it was up there with the 'stop shivering' thing when people were cold.

Cold would be nice. Dean liked cold. Especially when he could feel the heat building up in his body, eyes stinging from the temperature alone, until he couldn't tell which was hotter, the sand beneath his boots or his skin.

There was no shelter to be found and Dean was utterly lost. The hills were still somewhere behind him, in a very vague westerly direction, but other compass points had sort of melted together in a confusion of north-northeast, south-southwest, up and down, left and right, and he could no longer make any sense of it. Even his shadow had abandoned him, leaving him with no way to tell the passage of time.

Dean could remember bitching to his brother about Chupacabras and stuffed lambs just a couple of hours ago... how could he be this lost and alone now?

He opened his eyes, barely aware that he'd closed them in the first place, walking blinding forward. Always forward.

His left foot caught on the sand at the top of one more rise and, this time, too tired to care and too slow to stop it, Dean let himself fall down, scalding grains scrapping against the red skin in his chest as he rolled to the bottom of the dune.

A chill raced through Dean's body, exhausted muscles trembling against the granular surface when he came to a stop. He knew he should move. He knew that lying there, like a damn lizard in the sun, would be the end. No more Sam sneaking around him to find ways to break the deal, no more pretending that he didn't know what Sam was up to. No more Sam.

It felt like he was in Hell already, alone and burning and so miserable that even the company of hellhounds would be welcoming. Evil pets for company.

Dean giggled. He was loosing it and the scariest part was that he knew it. He could feel himself in that thin verge, that edge of a sharp knife, where things made no sense and all the sense in the world at the exact same time.

The shade came out of nowhere, like an unspoken wish that is suddenly granted. Dean sighed in relief, lungs filling with much more ease now that he wasn't fighting a star trying to cook him. He didn't even care if it was another of his illusions, one more mirage to vanish the minute he paid it closer attention or reached out his hand to touch it.

Maybe if he didn't look, the illusion would stay... keep him cooling down in its protective shade.

The fact that it took him a ridiculous amount of time to figure that the this shadow had actually come _to_ him, instead of teasing him from far away, told Dean just how far gone he was.

Rolling over, energy spent just from pushing his hand against the warm sand and letting his body go along with gravity, Dean finally opened his eyes and got his first look at what was shading him from the sun.

The vision that greeted him made no sense what so ever.

Dean blinked, fingers reaching up to his eyes out of habit, not remembering the sand on them until it was too late.

There were no tears to respond to the dirt irritating his eyes. Dean had no water left to produce them. But no matter how much he rubbed, the fog that had settled over his vision would not lift. Nor did the image above him change.

At first, Dean thought that maybe the Chupacabra had come out to play after all. Take advantage of the storm and suck itself a nice and juicy bit of hunter's blood, instead of usual goat.

But the thing staring down at him looked nothing like their intended prey.

Chupacabras were more like hairless hyenas, teenage mutant dogs. This... this _thing_ had wings!

There was really only one way to describe it. It looked like a giant... grey bat.

A very giant, very naked, bat. With a disturbingly male-like portion of anatomy dangling from between its very human-like legs.

Dean banged his head against the sand, hoping to force his delusional brain to snap back into reality. He only succeeded in worsening his already pounding headache, but _fuck a duck!_ he was actually hallucinating fucking Batman!

Dean giggled. He was more fucked up in the head than he'd given himself credit for. The level of detail alone...

This _Batman_ was nothing like the movies or TV show versions of the super-hero. It wasn't even close to the comics. If anything, this one looked more like a monster than anything else.

There were no arms that Dean could see, but the bat's wings were massive, expanding from its shoulders and ending somewhere around thigh high. They looked velvety, so dark that they seemed to eat whatever light touched them, spreading more than three feet as they expanded on either side. At the end of each wing, there were four sharp fingers that ended in sharp claws.

The thing's face was almost human, but something was off. There was no mouth on it, which Dean figured make sense, given that bats communicated by sonar.

Dean giggled again, feeling like he was loosing his mind. He had logical and scientifically consistent hallucinations. Who would've thunk that?

"You know... you look -cough- you look much better in the mm –cough- movies," Dean let out, feeling the words scrap out the skin of his throat and lips raw.

The hallucination let out a high pierced screech and moved closer. Dean knew this was all in his head, he knew the thing in front of him was just an effect of the heat, just as real and menacing as the ice cream truck had been. Still, he couldn't make himself sit tight and do nothing as he saw the huge monster advance towards him.

Dean tried to move back, crawl away in the loose sand, but his limbs were heavy and uncooperative. The bat jumped forward, its figure seemingly shimmering in a burst of blue and white light, before it landed on top of Dean, wings straddling the hunter's arms like a giant tent.

"What the fu--!" Dean couldn't get the words out through the gagging he could feel climbing up his throat. The stench of the thing was overpowering.

Dean wasn't particularly fussy about smells. Once you've had a taste of the sweet-sour smell of the recently decomposed, or of human fat burning for that matter, there really wasn't much your nose couldn't take.

This bat-man-thing, however... Dean was hard pressed to think of anything in his long and varied hunting career that smelled worse. If shit were a cow and its tits gave milk, the smell of it going sour would be just like that.

In between the heat, the noise the bat was shrieking out and the smell, Dean could feel himself further and further from reality, contours ebbing away, senses mixing memories with experience, imagination with fantasy. It was frightening to feel himself lose touch with the world and yet be so sharply aware of what was happening around him.

The thing's eye –because for some reason, only now Dean was taking noticed that his fucking hallucination Batman was also a fucking cyclops- fixed on Dean and suddenly, it was like he was trapped inside a giant, invisible rubber band. A spider web, where he was stuck, helpless and frozen, waiting to be feasted upon.

It was impossible to move, it was impossible to breath, it was impossible to tear his gaze away from the thing, coming closer and closer.

It was impossible that this was real at all.

Hallucination or not, Dean wasn't taking any chances, not when he was trapped like a rat and the thing was looking at him like he was gourmet cheese. Worming his hand alongside his leg, Dean tried to reach for the knife he had strapped to his ankle.

If there was a time in his life when Dean cursed his long legs, this was it.

The bat thing on top of him let out another of its high screeches and Dean felt two bony knees landing on each side of his thighs. The thing's phallus -because giving his current position, standing at attention right in Dean's line of sight, he refused to call it a dick- was uncomfortably poking at his stomach. Dean's guts revolved on themselves in sympathy and he coughed, dry throat trying to close on itself. Dean wasn't entirely sure if that was from the forgotten thirst or the building panic.

"Ohhh-kkkkay then," Dean let out, his voice impossibly small, the sarcasm so forced it became deluded in the amounting dread. "As far as hallucinations go, you suck. So, we might as well call it a—"

Dean had no time to finish or even touch the tip of his fingers on the hilt of his knife. The sand under his body shifted, like waves with no water, undulating and molding around him. Before Dean could understand what was going on, he was facing down, nose pressed against the sand and the weight of the beast, his _fucking hallucination Batman!_, was pressing down on him, stealing his breath and crushing his ribs.

"Get the fuck off of me!" Dean yelled against the sand, trying to buckle up and dislodge the presence on top of him. He refused to acknowledge the fact that he couldn't move, refuse to admit what this whole fucked up situation was shaping up to be and most of all, he _fucking refused to be raped by a figment of his own imagination!_

Dean's heated brain kept grasping at logic straws, things that didn't add up, like someone pitching itself awake in a nightmare, holding them closely as the life saviors that they were, assuring him that none of this was real. This couldn't be real.

For one, as far as he knew –and where it came to monsters, Dean Winchester knew a lot- there was no such thing as a cyclops bat that roamed the desert in search of sexual prey; and second, just as long as he had his clothes on, Dean was pretty sure that there was no way that thing was sticking any part of its fucking bat anatomy in him. And so help him God... if that fucking beast just as much as dared to dry hump him....

Turned out, the monster on top of him had more in mind than a dry hump.

Turned out, it didn't even need to move Dean's jeans and boxers out of the way to get what it wanted.

Turned out that being ripped apart from the inside out by the Yellow Eye Demon wasn't the worst thing ever that Dean could endure.

Dean could still feel the heat of his jeans and boxers, the fabric slightly damp and clinging to his skin from sweat. The bat-thing had made absolutely no movement to pull them down or even rip them apart, something that Dean feared would be ridiculously easy with the claws it had.

But that was as far as reassuring as the situation get.

Even though he was still clothed, Dean could feel in painfully detailed accuracy when the bat's pulsing dick touched the groove in between his ass cheeks, rubbing itself sluggishly like it was mapping a familiar territory. It was as much of a foreigner feeling as it was intrusive and wrong, wrong, wrong! It felt too close to a caress, too close to consent.

Dean was almost relieved when the monster, apparently satisfied with whatever it had felt, dropped all pretenses of tenderness or permission and pushed its dick in, shoving brutally at a small space that wasn't, at all, prepared to receive it.

Dean screamed, a soundless gush of air that rushed out of his mouth and did little more than raise a few grains of sand near his face. His arms, trapped under the bat's wings and claws, curled into claws of his own, fingers disappearing inside the sand, eager to grab any part of the beast and just _hurt_ it back.

But Dean couldn't move, couldn't scream, couldn't make it stop. All he could do was endure and hope for a end. Any end, even if it meant dying. Because nothing, absolutely nothing on Earth could possibly feel worse than that.

The invading feeling of something going into a place where all of Dean's instincts told him it should be going out, took shape, grew heavier and gained momentum.

Dean could feel his insides strain and distort, muscles stretching beyond what they were meant to ever be stretched, places filled like they had never been filled before.

When the bat-beast finally came inside of him, Dean was barely aware of the sand scrapping his face from the violent back and forth motion; he was barely aware when they'd stopped moving at all. His whole world had been reduce to the weight on his back, to the heaviness of his lungs, to the pain running all the way down his thighs like a dagger.

The sob that finally broke free from Dean's throat was free of tears, even if inside, Dean was crying rivers of shame.

And then the shadow was gone and with it, so were Dean's last remains of consciousness.


	3. Chapter 2

Once more, please read all warnings in the Prologue before proceeding. None of the nasty stuff happens in this one, but there are plenty of references.

As always, a massive THANK YOU goes to Jackfan2 for her beta-work. All remaining mistakes are my own. Chapter 3 will be posted on April 19th. In the mean time, enjoy!

* * *

CHAPTER //(o|o)\\TWO

Sam had stopped being worried about three minutes after Dean had disappeared. He was passing well beyond panic thirty minutes after that. Now? Now there really wasn't a word to describe the hole in the pit of Sam's stomach, the heaviness in his heart that kept him from taking a lungful of air, the permanent sting in his eyes that had nothing to do with the glare of the sun, reflected off the white sand.

Dean was nowhere near the place Sam had found himself in. That was a conclusion that had come fairly quick to Sam, based on little else other than the mere fact that he would _know_ if his brother was within reach. Sam knew Dean wasn't.

Which had left him with the impossible decision of either leaving Dean behind to go get help on the nearby town; or start a search on his own, through a desert that he knew to stretch for thousands of miles, with nothing more than a compass and the two bottles of water that he'd raced to the car to fetch.

They knew, going in, that they'd be hunting in a place with no cell phone coverage. It wasn't the first time, but it would certainly be the last, that much Sam was sure of. They had just figured that there would be no need to call anyone for help because a frigging sand storm had swiped one of them away.

They'd figured wrong, obviously. And right now, Sam would happily give his right nut freely just to get his hands around a fucking satellite phone so that he wouldn't have to choose between abandoning his brother or start an impossible search and rescue on his own.

Sam guessed that, from the way the sun was getting hotter and hotter by the minute, in the time it would take him to reach any sort of civilization and get a search party ready, Dean would be –literally- toasted.

Which left Sam to trust his instinct and hope that he would be able to guess which direction the sand storm had dragged his brother away.

He couldn't be far, Sam had figured. There was no way that the storm had lasted more than a couple of minutes and, even blowing strong and fast as it had, it was no hurricane. There was no way that it could've dragged a man of Dean's size and build for more than a mile of two.

Of course, there was the fact that the storm had no particular direction that Sam could figure at the time –on account of having his eyes glued shut and his arms thrown over his head-, which left him with a mile search in every frigging 360 degrees of desert expanse around him.

Sam had tried shouting for Dean. It was the first thing he did. His voice had given up around hour two.

Now, Sam was at his breaking point, one step away from falling to his knees to search the sand around him on all fours. This was not how he lost Dean. This couldn't be it. He'd come all this way because there might be someone here who could help Dean... and this... this had been the excuse, not the thing that got Dean dead.

He looked up, the blare of the sun nearly blinding him. How long had he been searching for Dean? Three hours? Four? The temperature had to be well near 120ºF and, unlike him, Dean had no water with him.

Jesus... of all the ways to go...

Sam's foot caught on something and he looked down out of habit, to make sure he hadn't stepped on a snake or something else that might take revenge on his sorry ass.

It was a boot. A well-worn, brown boot. More exactly, it was one of the boots he'd seen Dean put on just that morning.

Bile rose on Sam's throat. The reality of the present confronted with the lighthearted banter that had issued all those hours ago, as Sam teased Dean for wearing steel-tip boots to the desert.

Heart jumping to his mouth and threatening to jump out, Sam realized that now that he'd found what he was looking for, Sam wasn't the least bit happy with the discovery.

Now that he knew where to look, Sam could easily see the rest of the shape of his brother's body, laying face down, half covered in sand and painted in the colors of the desert. From a distance, Dean looked like any other of the thousand dunes and sand formations around Sam. And Sam could've missed him entirely.

For one terrifying and paralyzing moment, Sam's too afraid to even touch Dean and find out that he was too late. Like an outsider, experiencing things through a thick glass wall, Sam felt his knees hit the sand and land near his brother's chest, watched his hand move forward as trembling fingers touched shyly on Dean' shoulder.

Dean's skin was hot to the touch, but, under the unforgiving kiss of the sun, that didn't mean much. His back, without the protection of clothing, was bright red and already blistering, feeling painful just to look.

The shirt, the one that should be protecting Dean' skin, was instead rolled askew over his head, hiding part of Dean's face.

Putting two fingers on Dean's neck and finding the pulse point would be too final, to definitive, and Sam wasn't ready yet to find out if Dean was dead or alive. Instead, Sam wrapped his hands around Dean' shoulders and gently rolled him on to his back, cringing in sympathy when the raw skin hit the warm sand. Dean didn't even flinch and Sam's heart skipped a couple of beats at that.

Dean's face was burned as well, though not to the extent of his back, lips cracked and nose already peeling. The skin around Dean's eyes had turned brown, peppered with fresh freckles, making him look like some sort of albino raccoon.

His chest moved slowly up and down, sluggishly pushing air inside Dean's lungs. That small movement, tenuous as it was, was one of the most beautiful things that Sam has ever seen.

"Dean... Dean, can you hear me?"

The only answer that Sam could squeeze out of his brother was a small puff of air that escaped his lips when Sam grabbed Dean's face. Hurriedly unscrewing the bottle of water that he'd carried religiously through the desert as he searched for his lost brother, Sam kicked himself mentally for not starting his ministrations by that. It was obvious to the naked eye that Dean was well beyond dehydrated.

There was sand all over Dean's face, sand clinging to his closed lashes, sand in his teeth. Brushing away most of it with his hands, Sam didn't waste much more time with awkwardness or second guesses as he stuck two fingers inside Dean's mouth and cleaned out the sand he could see there as well.

Only when he was satisfied that Dean would be tasting water and not crushing sand beneath his teeth, did Sam allow for a few drops to fall in between Dean's parted lips.

Sam could easily see the moment when Dean's reflexes caught-up on the notion that water was finally been supplied to his thirsty body and his throat started bobbing up and down, eagerly swallowing.

"That's it Dean... nice and easy... I got'cha... nice and easy..."

He needed to get Dean out of there, even though Sam wasn't quite sure how he was going to carry his brother all the way to the car. Raising his head, Sam tried to get some sort of bearing to where they were and how far from the car they stood. He was more than a little surprised when he realized that he could see the glint of the Impala, reflecting the sunlight, no more that a mile to the west of them.

Sam's fingers clenched around the plastic water bottle. Dean could've died there, alone, in the desert... and rescue was only a stupid mile away. Fucking Winchester luck...

Biting back the tears that threatened to fall now that the adrenaline was slowly melting into just bile inside his mouth, Sam made short work of peeling off his own shirt and draping it over Dean's naked torso and retying Dean's own shirt more securely around his head. It was high time they left that damn sandy place.

//(o|o)\\

It was cold, the kind of cold that skips over skin and flesh and heads straight to freeze your bones.

It wasn't supposed to be that cold in the desert, was it? Or maybe night had fallen... deserts were suppose to be chilly motherfuckers at night, right?

Either way, Dean was certain that what he was feeling beneath his ass and against his back was not sand. Sand was not that smooth and straight... and sand most definably did not have hands...

"Get off me!" Dean mumbled, the words fumbling for exit from his mouth like giant balls of cotton passing through the head of a needle. He was vaguely aware of a splashing sound, the blurred notion that his hand was the one making that sound whenever he tried to raise it to bat away the annoying and touchy foreigner hands, and promptly failed. No hands, not his nor the annoying ones, seemed willing to obey his commands.

"Knock it off, you over-cooked moron!" Sam's voice, all bark and no bite, answered his struggles.

Dean relaxed, allowing his hands to sink back bellow the surface of the tepid and sloshing water. While it was somewhat reassuring that those were Sam's hands that Dean could feel holding him up inside the water, Dean wasn't exactly all that clear on _why_ the hell Sam was giving him a bath. "Freaking perv," Dean mumbled, settling for the verbal assault.

"Yeah, yeah... you're irresistible, man," Sam muttered with a chuckle. "Let's just bring your damn temperature down a few notches and then you can move your irresistible and complaining ass back to bed, okay?"

That made absolutely no sense at all. How could Dean have a temperature if he felt like a damn icicle stick? Even with the boxer shorts and the tee shirt he could feel clinging to his body, Dean felt like he was stuck naked inside a freezer. He could almost feel the ice cubes forming between his fingers. Dean opened one eye, to check for actual frost on his skin. "Fuck!"

The glare of the artificial light on the bathroom ceiling felt like a hot white dagger, shoved through his eyes and searing straight deep inside his brain. "Couldn't find a brighter light?" Dean asked, the sarcasm almost masking the gasp in his voice.

Dean could hear his brother sigh, seating on the tub beside him. "Sorry about that... but it's either that light or groping you in the dark... which I don't think either of us could survive without intense therapy." Sam explained with a snort. It felt as humorous as a rotten tooth.

Dean quieted, accessing his body now that he knew the 'whom', 'where' and half of the 'why' of his current, embarrassing situation. He was shivering in the water. Hard enough to make a sea-storm of his own inside the half filled tub Sam had stuck him in.

The trembling and shaking must've been going on for some time now, because Dean's muscles felt like they'd been through a thorough workout. Or a beating. Whichever hurt the most.

Either way, Dean had a nasty suspicion that if, for some reason, Sam had actually listened to him and let go, Dean would've probably sink down and drown in the smallest amount of water ever known to drown a grown man. What the fuck had happened for him to feel like shit ice cream?

Last thing Dean could remember was drowning. He had been drowning in sand.

Dean grappled with his sloshed memories. He was drowning in sand because... something was pushing him in... pressing him down against the ground... something was trapping him... som—that thing! That thing was pushing inside—

Dean gasped, hands and legs flailing inside the confinement of the bathtub. He had to get out—he had to escape—he had to—

"Quit it! Gessh! You're worse than a six months old puppy," Sam complained, his hair dripping wet from the all the water flying around.

Dean ventured to open his eyes again. It didn't matter how much the light hurt. He just needed to see Sam, needed to see if the joking and ease in Sam's voice were real or just hiding something else. Had Sam seen it? Did Sam know?

Sam's face was worried, Dean could see that, but it was a level of worry that he'd seen before, too many times before. It was the level of worry that came from not knowing if a wound would get infected or from finding themselves facing a demon with no weapons at all. It was the kind of worry that told Dean that Sam could deal with it, could do something about it.

If Sam had found any evidence, anything suspicious, when he'd manhandled Dean into a bathtub— Sam would surely look different if he he'd seen anything, right? He would want to talk about it, ask questions, the whatnot...

"Hey... hey, Dean? You with me, man?" Sam's voice cut through the haze of Dean's thoughts.

Dean blinked owlishly, his brother's looming figure shading him from the above light. The raw light bulb did weird things to Sam's hair, making it look like multicolored halos.

"Dean... come on, snap out of it! I said no more falling asleep, okay?" Sam called out, two fingers snapping in front of Dean's eyes before trapping his chin and urging him to pay attention. "I need you alert and moving, dude... not carrying your ass around again."

That seemed like a pretty good reason to Dean. He didn't want his ass being carried around either. He forced his cotton wrapped brain to focus on the here and now. It was a hard thing to do, especially when all that his brain seem to come up with was a repetition of 'stopit! stopit! stopit! stopit!' that was really giving Dean a headache. "What—what the hell happened? How did you—"

//(o|o)\\

"Pure dumb luck," Sam confessed with a sigh. As soon as he was sure Dean wouldn't sink back down, Sam relaxed and sat back with his ass on his heels, bended knees relaxing against the wet floor.

Truth was, if he hadn't literally stumbled across Dean's body, Sam might've never found him. Not in time anyway.

Be that as it may, they'd still cut it too close. Sam had tried everything to get Dean's temperature down when they got to the motel room, from wet sheets to ice packs snuggled against his body. Nothing seemed to work, as if Dean's brain was still stuck in the desert and kept telling his body that it was okay to be that hot. If Dean's temperature hadn't begun to drop half an hour ago, Sam was ready to haul him to the hospital before his brain fried.

"Storm blew you away, but somehow you managed to end up pretty close to the road... were you trying to walk back to the car?"

Dean nodded absentmindedly. He'd been walking, that much he was sure. He hadn't thought he was close to anything. In fact, the last thing he could remember before that –thing- showed up, was of being utterly lost.

"Good sense of direction, dude... you almost made it all the way there."

//(o|o)\\

Dean shrugged. His orientation wasn't all that hot after wandering through the desert as long as he had. And if Sam wasn't making any sort of comment about all that happened _after_ that... maybe his sense of reality wasn't all that good either.

"Did we get it?" Dean asked, not sure how he could get Sam to say something about what he _thought_ he'd saw, without actually _telling_ Sam what he saw. It didn't help that Dean couldn't even remember what they'd doing in the desert in the first place.

Knowing that his doubts and need to know must've been all pathetically explicit in his face, Dean dropped his gaze from Sam's face and focused on his toes instead. They were shriveled like old prunes.

Sam followed Dean's gaze down. His brow did a shy dance over his tired eyes. "Get what?"

Dean resisted the urge to blurt out _'the giant bat who fucked me half a feet into the sand'_. "The thing that we were hunting?" _'Don't say bat... please don't say bat... say anything but bat...'_ Dean pleaded to his toes.

"You mean the Chupacabra?" Sam asked, confused. "Dude... forget the Chupacabra... those goats will be safe for awhile until you get back on your feet... or at least stop looking like a peeling tomato past its expiration date."

Dean looked at his arms. He did look like an over cooked lobster. But that didn't matter one bit. Sam hadn't said bat. If Sam were as close to the car as he was, he would've certainly seen something, heard something. This was not something his brother would lie about. Not this.

Dean sighed in relief. There was no giant bat, there had been no attack, none of what he'd felt had been real. It was just his freaky mind hallucinating monsters in the hot sun.

"So, you ready to get out of that soup? You're starting to look like an old lady," Sam said with a snicker.

Trying to use his muscles to haul himself out of that bathtub was like dragging a cement block with nothing but your teeth. Everything hurt, everything weighed a frigging ton.

Inside, though, Dean felt weightless. The burden of having to face what he'd imagined had happen in the desert had been lifted from his shoulders. He had no idea where he'd gotten that amount of detail, he didn't wanted to know how his twisted brain could tell his body what it felt like to be assaulted in such a brutal manner, but at least now he could deal with the fact that it was his mind that was fucked up, not his body. Not his will. Nothing had changed. He was still whole.

Still...

Dean couldn't shake the deep and dark impression that the damn hallucination had left on his mind, on his body. It was like an old stain whose contours he could still guess, like a twisted version of phantom pain where an amputated limb hurt like it'd been cut, even though it was never there to begin with.

His mind was telling him that he'd been attacked. His body and logic were telling him that it was all in his mind. Dean had to be sure, or else the smallest speck of doubt would haunt him like an elephant.

Sam's arm was right there, keeping him balanced as Dean rose to a stand inside the tub.

"Listen, Sam... could you—" Dean mumbled, his hand making vague motions in the air, pointing in the general direction of the door.

Instead of moving away, Sam's grip grew tighter around Dean's arm. "What? You feeling okay? Got up too fast?"

Dean couldn't help but smile. Sam was such a mother hen. "No dude... I just need to take a shower," he said.

Sam gave him a look, a pointed gaze that traveled from his dripping clothes and shriveled body to the tub from where he'd just gotten up.

Dean could read perfectly well the steady rise of his brother brow.

"A proper shower, dude! Without clothes, like twenty-century people started doing," Dean complained, pulling the soaked boxers away from his hip with a sucking sound. "Been doing it alone for a long time now... not like I need your frigging permission..."

//(o|o)\\

Sam ignored the cranky attitude. Cranky attitude was standard behavior for a healthy Dean. Cranky was good.

The thing was, the Dean he'd carried inside that motel room two hours ago had been anything but healthy. And this one now, despite the attitude, still looked shaky and queasy enough to make Sam doubt the wisdom of leaving him alone with wet and slippery surfaces. "You sure you can handle it?"

It was Dean's turn to raise his eyebrow. Neither knew where they'd picked the habit from, but the fact was they could have entire conversations using nothing but facial hair. It was a blessing that neither had yet decided to grow a mustache.

Sam got Dean's 'fuck off' loud and clear. "Okay then—I'll just be outside if... you know... if you need anything or wha—"

"Get the fuck out already, asswipe!" Dean said with a smile. Mother hen. Every. Frigging. Time.

"Yeah, yeah... love you too, jerk!" Sam offered, flipping the bird to his brother as he closed the door behind him.

//(o|o)\\

The smile fell from Dean's lips as soon as Sam closed the door. Truth was, he wasn't all that sure that his rubbery legs were up to the task of holding him up for much longer.

Certainly not for as long as he would need to talk himself into doing what he needed to do. What he had to do to be sure.

Dean decided that getting the hot water running would be a good step forward. Now that he was out of the meek soup that Sam had been keeping him in, Dean could already feel the chill in the air, raising goosebumps in the wet skin of his arms and legs.

He guessed that hot water and sunburned skin didn't really mix, but Dean was just too frosty to really care, too freaked out of his mind to even register.

Carefully shrugging off the soggy boxers that Sam had mercifully kept on and peeling off the grey shirt like it was a second skin, Dean leaned against the spray, watching the steam grow around him like artificial fog.

A warm fog.

A warm fog that wasn't doing anything for the shivers that insisted on racking Dean's teeth inside his mouth. He just needed to stop shaking enough to be able to check out his own butt. Piece of cake.

It was just a body part, half of Dean's brain tried to convince the other. It was a body part that he'd never given much consideration before -and certainly not in the molds that his hallucinating mind had devised- but a functional part of his body nonetheless.

And it certainly wasn't like he'd never considered the possibility of _ever_ trying it like that. Because he had. Considered it. Sort of tried it, even.

There had been the occasional kinky girl who had venture a finger in there when she was sucking him off; and on one memorable occasion, there had been Vicky and her talent tongue...

Point was, Dean was aware of his whole body. He had too, as a hunter... he wanted to, as a man. Which did not explain why it was so fucking hard now to just reach behind himself and... see what's what.

It was just like any other opened wound. Poke at it, feel around for tears and breaks, and look for infection. He'd done the same with a frigging gunshot wound... no reason to pussy foot around it now.

Trying not over thinking it too much, Dean kept one hand on the moisture filled wall for balance, and tentatively reached down between his legs and behind.

His fingers were tingling, millions of ants running up and down his arm, and Dean wondered if he would even have any sort of sensibility for this in his fingertips. Did he even know what he was looking for?

Extra holes?

Blood?

Imaginary, giant-bat jizz?

His sanity? Oh, God—

The world tilted around Dean's vision, contorting and expanding in time with the pounding in his head and both his hands flew to the wall, grasping the wet, blue tiles like they were handholds.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, Dean bent his knees to rest his throbbing head against the tiles. What the fuck was he doing?

"Fuck this!" Dean let out, squeezing his eyes shut and allowing his trembling finger to touch his ass. Like a barefoot soldier, trumping through a field of mud and shit, Dean stomped forward, sweat breaking all over his skin even though water was falling on him.

Mentally flinching as he found the rim of his anus, Dean gradually relaxed when his mind clued in on the fact that the contact wasn't causing any actual pain.

There was nothing there. No soreness, no unfamiliar territory, no alien wetness besides the one provided by the water raining down on him.

Dean sighed, falling to his knees the minute the weigh in his chest was lifted for good. He wanted to scream out relief, shout that he was okay. Dean settled for slapping his open palm on the wall, the wet plashing sound feeling like fireworks of celebration.

It had never happened. It had truly never happened. Dean giggled like a kid, clasping a hand over his mouth when he caught the sound echoing around him.

"Dean... you okay?"

Dean looked up, startled, knees slipping on the wet floor and almost losing his balance in the process. Sam was by the bathroom door, hand still in the handle, fear and surprise mixing in his face.

Dean figured that he was offering a pitiful image at the moment, naked, on his knees and laughing in the bathtub. He certainly didn't look like a sane person.

"Fucking desert," Dean mumbled, deciding that it was just easier to blame it on the sun than give Sam the long version of it.

Carefully keeping a tight grip on the tub's edge, Dean hoisted first one leg and then the other, before grabbing a ratty towel and wrapping it around his waist. It wasn't like he and Sam hadn't seen each other's nakedness a thousand times before, but at the moment, Dean was just too self conscious of his own body to not _not_ feel embarrassed by the situation.

The fact that Sam was still staring at him wasn't helping matters one bit. On his face, fear and surprise had been replaced by pure and unveiled concern.

"Gessh, dude... take a picture or something," Dean mumbled, unable to hide the awkwardness of such a close inspection any longer.

Sam ignored his gruffness and stepped closer, eyes glued to Dean's torso.

"What the hell happened to your chest? It wasn't like that when I found you..."

Dean looked down. He'd been so focused on what he needed to know that everything else around him had blurred away. But now that he could bring himself to look at the rest of his body, he could see the obvious bruises on his chest, darker than the red skin surrounding them, expanding from breastbone to armpits. They looked organized, almost forming a defined pattern. They looked like a black and blue butterfly... or a opened-wings bat.

"I... I have no idea," Dean stumbled the words out, one hand reaching to tentatively touch the discolored skin. The pain was instant and too real. "Must've... hit a rock or some'ing... when the... sandstorm... pushed me."

Sam seemed to ponder that for a minute, sixty seconds of making Dean feel even more uncomfortable under that damn microscope.

"Well, we should check to see if there's anything broken," Sam finally said. It was as close as he would ever get of letting the matter go.

//(O|O)\\

By the time Sam was done with all the fussing –force feeding Dean water until his ears were drowning, making sure that there were no broken ribs and watching carefully to make sure that Dean's lobster-red skin was properly and liberally covered in copious amounts of balm- Dean was all but asleep in the remaining non-soaked bed. His right hand, still smeared with the foul smelling grease of the unguent he'd used, was carelessly draped over his stomach, fingers curled around the waistband of his sweat pants.

Making sure that his brother was comfortable and well beyond the point of having his brain cooked by an overheated body, Sam quietly put on his jacket and left. Dean's phone was by the nightstand, right next to the water bottle and the painkillers.

Dean needed nothing more than a good night's sleep. And Sam had an important date to get to.

The Cahuilla Indian he'd come to see lived in the middle of nowhere, on the outskirts of the desert, about five miles from where they were staying. Chief Ahtuapu was the oldest Cahuilla still around, self-exiled from his people and keeper of the tribe's folklore and memories.

The Cahuillas' connection with the supernatural was something that was too deeply engrossed into their lore for Sam to ignore. Like most of other natives, their respect for Nature's deities was profound and an active part of their lives and fates. But unlike other natives, the Cahuillas were known for their dealings with those deities, for being the chosen people who could actually interact with the supernatural.

If those dealings could be translated into deals, Sam was sure that this would be as close to saving Dean from his schedule trip to Hell as he would ever be. It was a chance that he couldn't risk to waste.

Chief Ahtuapu had agreed to see him that night. And even though every fiber in his being insisted for Sam to stay with Dean, he forced himself to do the right thing and stop wasting Dean's remaining time with pointless mother hen attitudes.

TBC


	4. Chapter 3

Like always, I advise you: please read all warnings in the Prologue before proceeding. More nasty stuff happens in this chapter, so don't come complaining to me when you lose your lunch over this ;O)

This time around, I'm not going to make promises about Chapter 4 because May is the last month I'll have to work on my SPN Big Bang story. Plus, my wonderful beta will be busy with both her Big Bang story PLUS beta-ing mine (I know... totally insane). So, I will try to not go too much beyond the one month time-slot that I've been keeping so far, but thought it was only fair to let you guys know that delays may occur. Chapter 4 is about half way done, so... might not be that bad ;O)

A massive THANK YOU goes to **Jackfan2** for her beta-work. All remaining mistakes are my own.

* * *

CHAPTER//(O|O)\\THREE

Dean pushed the bed covers away from his legs with an angry kick. It was too hot and even though the sheets were threadbare and almost see-through, their touch on the burned skin of his chest was becoming abrasive and infecting his whole body with an over cooked feeling.

It was easy to remember the last time he'd tried to get a tan to compete with his brother and had ended up with results similar to the ones he was sporting now. Dean had been sixteen and Sam had recently turned twelve and they'd spend a whole summer at Bobby's. It'd been hotter than a fat lady's ass crack and Dean remembered stomping his foot on the sunscreen that the older hunter had offered him, saying that was for wusses and babies.

Dean's skin had peeled for a whole week after one day under the hot sun and by the end of their stay, his smug younger brother was supporting a healthy and golden tan while Dean was shedding skin like a leper.

Dean tossed and turned on the too hot bed for what felt like the millionth time; throwing his arms up letting them rest against the cold surface of the bed's headboard, Dean sighed in temporary relief.

His sore body kept pulling him under, exhausted beyond reason, even if the running thoughts inside his head kept Dean from slipping too deep into unconsciousness.

Sam had told that he was running to the store on the other side of town to fetch some supplies. Dean knew he was lying. There was a general store at the end of the street that was perfectly fine for whatever Sam needed to buy. Besides, even if his brother had to drive all the way across town to fetch whatever it was he wanted, it wouldn't take him more than a hour to do so.

Of course Dean was supposed to be deeply asleep by the time the delay became too obvious. But that was beside the point.

Dean could easily guess where his brother was going. He'd been practically salivating over a particular Indian man, who just happened to live near by. And Dean could bet his right nut that that was exactly where Sam was now.

Dean shifted, hissing when his back dragged across the sheets and flamed the sensitive skin all over again, pushing sleep further away. He hated this twilight of awareness, where he knew he wasn't asleep but his brain wasn't quite awake either.

It was dangerous territory for a hunter, a place where memories could sneak up on him and he wouldn't be alert enough to fight them back; a place where his brain could dig up whatever terror it wanted and bring to the surface nightmares that were usually buried deep and forgotten.

There were too many monsters, too many faces and too much pain for Dean to allow himself to wander in that foggy state of consciousness for too long.

When he was younger, young enough to not know better, this was the time of the night where he would see his mother, dressed in a blue summer dress, holding a burning matchstick in her fingers. The fire would burn and burn through the match until it reached the tip of her fingers, and still she wouldn't let go.

Later, it just became whatever monster he'd failed to kill, whatever victim he'd let die.

Today... today it was twisted shadows on the hot sand and winged monsters breathing down his neck.

Dean opened his eyes, daring his mind to do any sort of replay now that he could see the cracked ceiling and the ugly painting on the wall facing his bed. Ugly, but not a monster.

The closed curtains, doing little to hide the occasional flare of a car's headlights, shrouded the silent room with dark corners and playful shapes.

Dean flung his right arm over his eyes. The dancing shadows in the empty room were making him more jumpy than what he was used to. There was nothing in there, Dean was sure of that. He'd seen Sam lay out the salt lines, he knew both the door and the windows were locked and he knew all the usual protection charms and amulets had been scattered around the place. He was just... jumpy. Jittery, like he'd had a dozen coffees.

The fact that Dean knew there was absolutely no reason for him to be acting like that only grated harder against his annoyance. Every time Dean closed his eyes, all he could see were giant black wings and a deformed face. Why couldn't his mind let go of that?

And the smell in that room... he and Sam had stayed in some pretty stinky places, but this one took the cake.

Dean hadn't really noticed it before, when the steam of the shower and the faint smell of the wheat soap still filled the air, but now... he was half tempted to get up and find out exactly what animal was rotting under the bed. If the stench was anything to go by, it was probably a dead cow.

The shadows shifted again and Dean resisted the urge to slip his hand beneath his pillow and curl it around the handle of his knife. He cursed out loud. This was turning ridiculous. Dean Winchester, jumping at shadows.

Which made it all the more surprising when the shadows jumped back at him.

Dean could hear the springs of the mattress protesting under the added weigh before he felt the heat and the body pressed against his.

"T'fuck?" He let out, heart hammering against his chest. His first instinct was to grab the weapon beneath his pillow, but he couldn't move his arms. He couldn't move at all.

His mind drifted back to what he'd imagined in the desert and bile forced its way up Dean's throat. It hadn't been real. It'd been just a heat-induced hallucination.

God! He could recognize the smell now. That wasn't the stench of an unkempt motel room. It was the same stink he'd choked on in the desert, the same rotten and shitty smell that had filled his nostrils just before that thing...

Panic slammed into Dean's chest with the force of a speeding locomotive.

Swallowing down the acid taste in his mouth, Dean bucked his hips up, trying to dislodge whatever it was that was keeping him pinned to the bed. He couldn't see a thing but he could certainly feel it. It was the same helpless feeling he remembered from before, that same ripping pull of every single muscle in his body wanting to react, to do _something_ and find out that none of them could.

A car drove by, the sound of tires on the asphalt clashing surreally with the pressure on top of Dean's body. The bright light of the car's headlights traveled across the room and, finally, Dean caught a glimpse of it.

The wings were as black as before and the bat-like thing was hovering above him, gaze just as hungry as before. Dean knew exactly what was going to happen next.

"No... this... this isn't happening... this can't be real..."

Saying it didn't help, though. Dean's brain was alert enough now to know that this was real. It was real now just as it certainly had been real before. As real as his brain was assuring him, so unless Dean's brain had finally check out...

There was no heat of the sun now, no confusion in his mind. The details were too sharp for it to be all inside his head. The texture of the leathery wings, the sting of it's claw-like fingers, rough against the flesh of his wrists, the growing warmth trapped between their closed pressed bodies as the thing's phallus grew and throbbed.

It wasn't shame that stopped Dean from crying out for help. His tongue had stopped working along with every other muscle in his body. Dean could barely move enough to get some air inside his chest, he couldn't reach any weapon and he wasn't even sure if they _had_ any weapon that would work on this thing and all he could think of was why the hell was Sam taking so long.

It wasn't pride that stopped him from crying for help. It was the feeling of something voluminous and wet, demanding entrance, pressed against his lips, pushing so hard that Dean felt his teeth cutting against his bottom lip before the pressure became too much and he was forced to open his mouth.

The hasty intrusion of something so foreigner and unyielding inside his mouth was enough to set off Dean's gag reflex. It tasted like wet dog fur, moist and sticky, with the consistence of sandpaper as it scrapped back and forth over his tongue, poking in turns the roof of Dean's mouth and the back of his throat, until he couldn't help but grunt at the pain. The fact that the thing assaulting him seemed to enjoy the flutter of sound being forced from Dean's vocal cords only aggravated Dean's sense of helplessness and indignation.

He tried closing his teeth around the bat's dick, but it was no use. Like his arms and legs, his jaw was trapped in whatever lockdown the creature had him in and Dean knew that he would only be allowed to move when the monster had had its fun.

The tears that crept up Dean's eyes were both a reflex of having his mouth opened past its comfortable position and the bitter bite of shame at being so coarsely used. Again.

_*Tell him*_

Dean blink back the shroud of tears and blackness from his eyes. He couldn't talk, he couldn't swallow, he couldn't fucking _breath_. But he'd heard the voice in his head and he was sure it couldn't have come from anyone else but the _thing_ pounding his mouth.

_*Tell him*_

Dean forced himself to look at the monster, trying to capture its eye and silently convey how much he wanted to kill it if the monster all but left Dean lift a thumb.

There was a slight glitch in the tempo it was setting, sawing in and out of Dean's mouth, enough for him to think that maybe, just maybe, it had understood his message. It was enough to give Dean something other to think other than the mantra of _getitoutgetitoutgetitout_ that was echoing over and over in his mind. Instead, Dean decided to picture all the ways in which he would end this ugly thing's existence.

Dean pictured setting it on fire, sitting back calmly as its wings were engulfed by red hot flames and withered away like they were nothing but burned paper.

Again the same bump in the movement, quickly compensated by pushing harder into Dean's mouth.

Dean gasped, fought for breath, but didn't give up. He pictured grabbing the knife beneath his pillow and cutting clean across the dick pounding his mouth, right before slashing the bat's throat, blood gushing wide and fast, spraying red all over the wall above the bed.

The bat's legs pressed against his shoulders so tightly that Dean could see nothing but dark, fury skin. There was bile rising up in his throat, but no room for it to get out, as the monster tested all boundaries. Dean felt like he was being filled down to his insides, a fire hose pumping air and sand directly into his stomach. He felt like he was dying.

Dean pictured reaching up and pick out the monster's single eye, turn it into pulp in between his fingers and use it's socket hole as a support for his gun's muzzle as he blew the thing's brains away.

The sudden feeling of something slimy filling his mouth caught Dean by surprise. It felt like someone had poured acid down his throat, watered down salt that tasted of death slithering all the way deep inside until it felt like he was on fire.

_* Your deepest wishes are now granted. Enjoy the gift I have bestowed you. *_

The bile that had been pushing to get out all that time, finally found its escape tunnel through Dean's nose, and he coughed and sputtered and felt himself choke in his own fluids and the gunk that the beast had shot into him.

'_Fuck you_!' Dean thought with all of his might, will to survive being pushed aside by the sheer amount of hatred and yearning to kill that supernatural motherfucker, who'd just used Dean to get his fucking rocks off and still had the nerve to act like _it_ was doing Dean a_ favor_. Granting Dean a whish, like all he ever wanted was to be used and abuse.

Fuck that!

As soon as Dean could move, he was going to gut that son of a bitch. As soon as he could breath.

Bile was still coming out, mixed with whatever that _animal_ had shot down Dean's throat and he couldn't get a single mouthful of air in. His throat was closing in and the last thing Dean wanted was for _this_ to be his last action on earth. To die without revenge, without payback... without retribution.

Oh, God! To have Sam come back and find him like this...

The bat-thing finally pulled its dick out from Dean's mouth. Dean gulped a lung full of air, his lungs burning and sluggish in their job. He spat out the remains of bile and spit and... and semen that were still in his mouth, sharp and fast breaths doing nothing to compensate the black spot dancing in Dean's vision.

_*Tell him... or I will return*_

It was the last thing Dean heard before he found out that he could move once again. He bolted out from the bed, covers falling around his feet, chest heaving from lack of air and terror.

Dean looked around. He was alone.

There was no point in running to the bathroom to puke out the nausea he could feel climbing up his throat once again. The smell of vomit and sex was already all over the room. He just had strength enough to turn his head to the side and retch all over the floor between the two empty beds.

/(O|O)\\

The Cahuilla man had been less than forthcoming with Sam. Not that he was expecting the old man to just spill all of his tribe's knowledge and secrets to the first strange that sought him out with baloney stories of Anthropology thesis and comparative studies of Northern Native American societies. But he had surely hoped for a little bit more than the small talk he got.

They had talked for a long time, mostly so that Chief Ahtuapu could have his fun watching Sam -in his tee shirt, over shirt and denim jacket-, sweat a month's worth of water inside a still too hot from the day's heat, tin-can trailer, while he sat comfortably in his shorts and sleeveless shirt.

Ahtuapu had talked about everything, from his people's Aztec origins to the last Rangers' game. It was only when a very frustrated Sam was preparing to leave that the Chief surprised him by mentioning the gifts Mukat gave to certain people, special people, and how very fortunate Sam was for being one of them.

Frozen on his spot, Sam had tried to get the dark skinned man to explain what he meant by that, but Ahtuapu had merely suggested that he should return the following day.

Sam knew he was being played. The native man wasn't even trying to cover it up. But the true measure of the desperate man was how far behind he would leave his own pride. And Sam was beginning to be desperate enough.

He arranged to meet the smirking man at the same hour, the following day, and drove back to the motel where he'd left Dean.

The lights were out in the room, but Sam had expected as much. After his close encounter with heat stroke and being tossed and twirled around by a frigging sandstorm, Dean had been pretty much whipped on his feet by the time Sam dragged him to bed.

The encouraging sound of snoring was, however, absent when Sam got in. Not that Dean usually snored because, fortunately and for both their sakes, none of them usually did... under normal circumstances.

Sam snored like a 'damn freighter train', as Dean put it, whenever he had a cold, which, as Sam had tried to explain over and over, was a _normal_ reaction to having your sinus completely clogged and not a plot to stop your older brother from getting some decent shut eye.

Dean, on the other hand, snored 'like a pig' when he was exhausted.

Which was why Sam had prepared himself for a night in blank, listening to Dean's ruckus sleep.

The silence was oddly disturbing. And the further Sam entered the dark room, the disturbing the whole thing got.

The place stunk.

There was some rotten smell hanging in the air like a living thing, which, allied to the strong smell of vomit, managed to congest all breathable air inside the room and make breathing a very gagging experience. It also worked pretty fast to push Sam into the panicked concept that something was very, very wrong.

"Dean?" Sam called out as he clicked the ceiling light on, the concern for a possibly dead-by-drowning-in-his-own-vomit brother overwhelming the reluctance of startling a perfectly healthy and slumbering brother.

There was no one dead in his own puke. Just the same as there was no one to startle.

The bed where he'd left Dean was empty, sheets tussled up, skewed and half on the floor; the threadbare pillow was tossed aside, white pillowcase looking darker from sweat. There was a pile of yellowed vomit by the bed, which Sam guessed to be the responsible for one of the foul smells in the air.

"Dean?" Sam called out again, softer this time, discouraged, as he knew that there was no one there to answer him.

The room was pathetic small to try and hide a six foot one man.

Sam checked the bathroom, just in case, but found it as empty as the rest of the room. The panic Sam had managed to force down when he'd flipped the lights on and wasn't met with a vision of Dean, not breathing, on his bed, surge anew, stronger than before, impossible to ignore or be put on a leash.

Dean had been dead on his feet when Sam left, practically unable to even put on his own clothes; he'd obviously been sick in between then and now; and he was missing.

A million theories crossed Sam's mind, from the Hellhounds coming sooner than what they were supposed to; to someone they'd pissed off recently, coming into the room and taking Dean to get revenge; to Dean's temperature spiking out of control and him taking off, chasing some fever-induced hallucination

Sam paced the room, blaming himself for leaving his brother alone after all that had happened that day. He should've stayed there, kept an eye on Dean's temperature, make sure that there were no lingering side effects from the heat stroke.

Instead, he'd gone to meet with a man who'd spent most of his time mocking Sam and being of no help at all.

Sam searched the room. Dean's boots and leather jacket were gone and he couldn't see Dean's wallet or cell anywhere.

If Dean had been taken against his will, his kidnappers certainly wouldn't concern themselves with footwear and warm clothing. And if his temperature had risen high enough for Dean to become delirious and wander off on his own, he wouldn't think to stop and take his wallet and cell phone with him.

So, wherever Dean was, it looked more and more like he'd gone by his own free will and choice.

Which did nothing for Sam's concerns.

Because Dean should've stayed put and resting, not wobbling around doing God knew what.

At that time of the night, without his car, there were only a couple of choices available anyway. Dean was either taking a long walk by the side of the road –which Sam didn't see happening even if Dean was _extremely_ delirious- or he shopping for china dinnerware –which was slightly more possible than being kidnapped by aliens.

There was nothing around there, no place to go, and Sam couldn't come up with one good reason why his beat-up and exhausted brother would've even left his bed.

Remembering the pile of puke by the bed, Sam figured that _maybe_, just maybe, Dean had gone out in search of some pharmacy, or convenience store, or frigging soda-machine, to get something to calm his obviously upset stomach.

Sam hope that, if that was the case, Dean brought back enough for two, because the store across the street had been closed when Sam had passed by, and he didn't even recalled seeing a pharmacy anywhere in town.

Silently praying that this was nothing but a silly over-reaction on his part, Sam opened his cell phone and hit Dean's number.

It was like ridding a rollercoaster of emotional ups and downs. The fact that there was actually a ringing tone was hopeful; the reality of the damn thing ringing more than five times before anything happening, was threatening to send Sam's heart into another race to despair. When someone finally answered the phone, Sam was ready to scream.

"_Hello?"_

"WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU, DEAN?" Sam found himself saying –screaming- at the phone piece before it actually registered that the voice on the other side wasn't Dean's. "Who the hell is this?"

There was a sigh on the other side, the muffled sound of thump-thumping music and several voices, traveling through the void of answers.

"_Told you to leave it the fuck alone!"_ Sam heard more clearly over the rest of the noise. There was a loud _sush!_ that hurt his ear and then the initial voice was back.

"_Hum... this is Steve... you coming to pick your buddy up?"_

Sam changed the phone from his right to his left hand. His fingers were sore from grabbing the thing so tightly. The guy was making little sense, like he was expecting Sam to know exactly what he was talking about. From the background clinking of glass, Sam could guess that he was talking from inside some bar. Had Dean gone out to _drink_?

"Where's the guy who this phone belongs to? Is Dean there?" Sam tried again.

"_Look, I don't know the guy's name, I don't even know if it's his phone or if he stole it from someone. All I know is that he's passed out on one of my tables and the phone was ringing on his hand. It's closing time and I'm not in the mood to give shelter to bums. You coming to pick him up or do I just toss him outside 'til he sobers up?"_

'Steve' sounded pissed enough to do just that.

"I'm coming. What's the name of the bar?"

//(o|o)\\

The Blue Oyster bar.

Trust Dean to, of all five bars within walking distance of the motel, pick the one with a rock band's name. The blue neon sign above the door, with the opening and closing oyster seemed straight out of a Family Guy cartoon rerun.

The place was already mostly empty, which made it extremely easy for Sam to locate his drunken brother, passed out on the corner table that faced the front door.

The bald giant behind the counter, pointing a long and chubby finger in Dean's direction as he spotted Sam's searching look, helped some. Mainly for Sam to identify the giant as Steve, the pissed off caller.

Sam nodded his head, acknowledging both the directions and the call, and made his way to Dean.

There were four empty beer bottles and a straight line of five shots decorating Dean's table. One of the shot glasses was still clutched between Dean's lax fingers. Dean's silver cell phone was poised on the tabletop, next to the empty ashtray.

Sam closed his eyes. What the hell had possessed his brother to get drunk on this day out of all others? Wasn't he beaten enough? Did he really need to add alcohol poisoning to everything else?

"Hey, Dean... come on dude... I already carried your sorry ass once today. Don't start making a habit out of this," Sam called out, shaking Dean's shoulder.

The second Dean's eyes moved and he registered the feeling of fingers wrapped around his arm, Dean's right fist came up swinging. Shot glass still trapped in his fingers and all.

Taken by surprise, Sam threw his body back, almost falling on top of the next table. The knuckles of Dean's fingers passed a couple of inches from his nose. The sour smelling remains of scotch inside the glass landed perfectly on Sam's face

"What the hell, man!?" He blared, whipping his dripping nose with one hand.

Dean's eyes, almost black in the dimly lit bar, crossed over his nose before settling into a somewhat focus on Sam's face.

"Sammeee... wa'... wat ya doin' heer?"

Sam shook his head. It wasn't often that Dean plastered himself in such manner. No control over his limbs and tongue, no control over his actions and leaving himself vulnerable in the company of strangers.

Not to mention that it usually took a lot more than a couple of beers and shots to get Dean to that point. Either the table had been clean of the rest of the empty bottles at some point of Dean's drinking bender, or Dean was worse off than Sam had figured.

Either way, the sight of his brother's unfocused and trusting eyes weighed heavily on Sam's chest. Dean drank to celebrate; he got drunk to forget.

And Sam could make a pretty good guess on what Dean was currently trying to forget. In fact, he was surprised that it had taken this long for Dean to allow himself a couple of hours of –albeit sick as dog- oblivion.

Living with the crushing weight of a countdown for a trip to Hell was something that Sam couldn't even bring himself to imagine.

Though he could hardly condone the fact that Dean had chosen to get drunk on the very same day that he'd gotten himself already badly dehydrated from the desert heat, Sam certainly couldn't condemn.

So, he gently fought Dean's fumbling arms, got him wrapped around his leather jacket, paid his bill and steered him to the passenger seat of the Impala with minimum fuss.

Dean wasn't much of a talker when he was drunk. Either because he'd trained himself to keep his mouth shut and not spill any beans about the family business and their affairs when he was drunk in the company of strangers, or merely because he simply wasn't a talkative drunk.

This time though, Dean was talking like gossiping old lady, like his self-imposed tongue block had somehow been eroded by too much stress, too much trouble bearing on his soul. He wasn't making much sense, though.

"Fuckin' batman... fuckin' fuker fuckin' peoples liv—I hate 'im, ya know... I mean... fucker!"

"I thought you liked Batman, Dean," Sam offered, joining in the inane conversation, knowing for certain that, come sobriety the next day, Dean wouldn't remember a word. "What happened to the '_best superhero ever'_?

"Not Batman, Sammeee... baaat man... Batman's aw'some... bat man is a moth'r fucker!"

Sam chuckled. That part hadn't changed. Dean didn't talked much when he was drunk, but the few words he said, were always colorful enough to make a seasoned sailor blush.

"'m gonna be readee Sammee... if he com's back... 'm gonna be readee... punch a hole in t' black fee'ry fucker, y'll see!"

Whatever sense that had made in Dean drunken brain, he looked like he'd said too much. Or was going to be sick again.

Sam turned on the blinkers, ready to stop the car and let Dean out to puke. It took him a couple of minutes to realize that the hand Dean had thrown in front of his mouth to cover it, wasn't because he was on the verge of being sick, but because he was physically stopping himself from saying anything else.

The drive was short and soon enough, the neon 'vacancy' sign of their current 'home' came in to view.

Dean, hand still draped around his mouth, stiffened on the seat next to Sam.

"What we doin' here?" He asked, sounding strangely sober.

Sam gave his brother a sideways glance as he pulled the car into park. "It's our motel Dean... we' re here to _sleep_... remember that? The thing you were supposed to be doing instead of getting shit-faced?"

"'m not goin' n'there," Dean said resolutely.

From the arms crossed over his chest to the determined line his mouth set across his sunburned face, Sam thought his brother looked more like a five year old throwing a tantrum than a grown-up drunk being pig-headed.

"Quit being an ass," Sam warned him, getting out and closing the door on his side.

He walked around the front of the car, waiting to hear the squeaky sound of Dean's door opening up. In the cricket filled silence of the night, there was no squeaky sound of more doors. Looking inside the car, Sam could easily see his brother, eyes drooping and head nodding in exhaustion, but arms still crossed, resolutely sitting inside the Impala.

Sam gauged his options. It was getting ridiculously late, and the last thing that he wanted was to draw unwelcome attention to them by forcibly dragging Dean out of the car and into the room. Not to mention the fact that he wasn't all that trilled either to get back to a room that smelled as bad as that one.

Letting out a dramatic sigh, Sam fished the room key from his pocket and, glancing one last time to check if Dean was really going to stay put in the car, set off to pack their things. Guess he could always find them another room further down the street. 'Mr. Fisher' would be paying for two rooms instead of one tonight. Which sucked for him.


	5. Chapter 4

Well... there is no excuse for the insane amount of time that has gone by since posting chapter 3 *shame*

It's been a bit hectic, with Big Bang posting date coming closer and closer. The thing was, I'd gone so deep into that other story line that I was finding it hard to back away and come back to the mind set needed for Darkest Side of Black. But I'm here now!

Hopefully, chapter 5 will be up in a month, around July. As always, my deepest thanks to Jackfan2 for her swift beta work. All remaining mistakes are mine

* * *

What has happened so far:

With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper.

Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities.

Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare.

Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels. This is what happens next...

* * *

CHAPTER/(O|O)\\FOUR

Dean's head felt like someone had dragged him to the bottom of the deepest ocean and sunk his brain in the sand there. He could feel the weight of tons and tons of water over him; he could taste the gritty texture of sand in his mouth.

"Guhhhrrr!"

"Good morning to you too," Sam said, his voice too shrill and cheering to be anything else but in purpose. "Take these... you'll feel slightly more human after."

Dean reached out blindly. It hurt too much to even think about opening his eyes. Feeling the two small, round pills that Sam deposited in his hand, Dean wasted no time throwing them down his throat. Extending his hand a second time, he knew that his brother would have a water bottle, ready for him.

They'd tended to enough of each other's hangovers to know what the other needed in the dreadful morning after.

The cold water felt good, smoothly running down his throat and Dean ventured an eye open. There was a cactus coat hanger on the wall by the door and the whole room was painted in different shades of puke green. He had no idea where he was.

"What happened?" he rasped, voice scrapping against the sore sides of his throat. He drank more water, hoping that would help.

"You got drunk," Sam said, stating the obvious. "While recovering from heat stroke."

Dean's bleary, gritty eyes, that'd been scurrying the room looking for anything that looked remotely familiar, returned to Sam's pissy face.

"And then you threw a fit... a very drunken and pissy fit, I might add, and refused to go back to our motel room. This was the best I could do at three in the morning with a passed out brother in tow."

Sam sounded angry, for some reason. Dean figured that he had _some_ foundation for that.

Why hadn't he wanted to return to their old room? Dean couldn't remember anything particularly unpleasant about the room itself... in fact, he couldn't even remember what color the wallpaper was, so why the hell—

The memory and the queasiness in his stomach hit at the same time and Dean had time only to answer one of them. Throwing back his bedcovers, Dean wasted one second trying to locate the bathroom in the new room and made a beeline straight to the toilet.

It was all coming back to him now. The failed hunt in the Mojave Desert; the sandstorm; the now two assaults by the bat-like creature, the last meal he'd eaten...

The need to climb out of his own skin and just _kill_ something, pushing him into reacting, into punching, biting, shooting anything that came near him, dueled inside Dean with the pull to just disappear altogether inside the deepest and darkest hole that he could find.

Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, Dean paused and stared at his wrist. The bruising there, like a bluish bracelet around the bony surface, was unmistakable for what it was. What the hell was happening to him?

Sam was lucky that Dean was not carrying a weapon when he placed a hand on his brother's shoulder. Dean's fist collided with his brother's face with a bone-jarring impact that sent them both hissing away in pain.

"T'fuck, Dean?" Sam barked, hand scrubbing at his already bruising jaw. Dean was shaking his right hand, knuckles red from impact. "When did I became your damn punching bag?"

Dean blinked back the tension tears that had gathered in his eyes, forcing the bile down. He had nothing more to puke out, either way. His brother was looking at him like he'd lost his mind, and Dean figured he wasn't that far off from the truth. He pulled at his shirt's sleeves, trying as best as he could to hide the evidence in his wrists. There was no way he could deal with Sam's questions now if his brother noticed the restraining bruising there.

"I'm sorry... you... you startled me," he excused himself lamely. "You okay?"

Sam just shook his head. It wasn't a 'no, he wasn't okay', just a dismissal, Sam figuring that his brother was still too drunk to make any sort of sense. Dean couldn't have felt more sober than at that very second, but the false idea sat just fine with him. Any fiction was better than the reality of the situation.

Dean had no clue about what was going on with him, and he had no clue about what he was dealing with, but for the first time in his life, he didn't wanted to stay and find out. Dean wanted to put this whole damn town in his rear-view mirror, speed down the highway and never look back.

Maybe then, when he was far enough away, he could stop thinking about the feelings of intrusion and of being used and abused that filled his mind right now. Maybe then he could swallow without being reminded of why his throat felt raw and tender. Maybe then he could go back into believing that this had all been in his imagination.

That wasn't going to happen, Dean knew that. For one, they still had a Chupacabra to gank. Leaving an unfinished hunt behind, after hammering into the Sam the notion that you never, ever do that, would only raise questions that Dean had no way to answer.

And then there was the bat creature itself. They hadn't heard about anything like that before, but if the thing was attacking one person, it stood to reason that it had attacked before. That it would attack again. They had a duty to keep that from happening, a duty that went far beyond Dean's unease and feelings of crawling skin.

Unless... unless the creature was somehow related to his deal. Perhaps it was nothing more than an advance guard in the army of demons that Dean would be facing alone and unarmed when his time came to go to Hell. A taste of what was instored for him for eternity...

Dean gagged, his chest convulsing with dry heaves that had long stopped producing anything.

"I think you lost your pills," Sam offered, the closeness of his voice reminding Dean that his brother was still there.

"Hum?" Dean look at the floor, utterly lost on what Sam was talking about. The tiles in this bathroom were of a dirty white tone, instead of the blue of the previous one. The color made it hard to find any other white things in it.

Sam gave him a look and pointed to the toilet instead. Following his finger, Dean saw two spongy blobs, floating in the midst of all the water and bile he'd upchucked.

If anything, the sight of the pathetic, half-dissolved pills, reminded Dean's head why it wasn't such a smart idea to drink yourself inside a bottle.

It had seemed like such a brilliant idea at the time.

Dean's first reaction after he's stopped emptying his stomach on the floor, was to go out and kill that thing. Only when he got to the street, did he realize that he had no car, he had no weapons other than a knife and he had no idea what he was dealing with. Drinking himself into a stupor had seemed like the valid alternative.

"Think you can keep yourself from face-planting in the floor for a bit?" Sam's voice cut in again. "I'm gonna get you some more, see if you can keep them down this time."

Dean nodded absentmindedly, grabbing his head when he felt his brain sloshing inside at the motion. Slowly, he got up, grabbed on to the sink and took a look at the mirror in front. His face looked, surprisingly, exactly the same as before.

From what he remembered of the events that had occurred before he crawled inside a bottle, Dean half expected to see his mouth torn all the way to his ears, split wide open from the enormity of the invasion it had suffered. But apart from the gray tinge to his skin and the dark bags under his eyes, the reflection looking back at Dean was the same as every other day.

How could he look the same? How could that monster attack him in such manner and leave no trace other than the bruising on his wrists?

Dean could still taste it. That unmistakable mixture of fur and death, of sweat and spit, of salt and acid...

"What are you doing?" Sam, hand closed around two more pills, was leaning against the door frame, watching Dean's face on the mirror.

Dean looked down. He had the toothpaste tube open and was in the process of squeezing half of it in his mouth. The fresh scent of peppermint was tantalizing and, despite Sam's inquisitive eyes, Dean did it any way, basking in the relief of tasting anything other than the monster in his mouth.

"Gezz, Dean... at least use your brush," Sam mumbled, face scrunched up in disgust. "Got you some more pills... we're out of Aspirin and a couple more things... you'll be okay for a bit?"

Dean met his brother's eyes in the mirror, not bothering to turn around as he collected his pills. Sam was looking too closely and Dean knew it was only a matter of time before he slipped up something and Sam would start making uncomfortable questions and assumptions. The toothpaste was making his stomach convulse again, but Dean still couldn't stop himself from chewing on it. "Thought you were going to the store to restock last night?" Dean offered, congratulating himself for remembering at least that much.

Sam looked predictably awkward at the question, eyes breaking the contact that he'd been keeping with Dean's and looking at the floor instead. "Well... yeah," he stumbled. "Yeah, I did... but then your punk ass decided that the other motel wasn't good enough and I just ended up leaving it all there..."

He was lying. Dean knew it and Sam knew he knew it, but neither said a word.

"Why didn't you want to stay there, Dean?"

It was Dean's time to look down, methodically screwing the lid back on the toothpaste tube. "The whole thing smelled like shit... couldn't sleep there."

Sam frowned. "We could've asked for another room..."

Dean just shrugged, hoping that Sam would just let the matter go. "I was drunk, man! You were the one who followed."

Sam sighed, his face taking on the sympathetic look that he always had whenever trying to coach some reluctant victim to talk. "Yeah... I know that," he started, making Dean cringe at the empathy in his tone of voice. "Dean... you know that, well with all that's going on, and with your deal coming due and—" Sam stooped himself, hands running through his hair and messing up the barely combed locks. "I'm just saying... are you okay?"

Dean forced himself to meet Sam's eyes again, even if it was only their reflection on the bathroom's mirror.

"I'm fine," Dean said. "I really am... don't worry, Sam."

Sam didn't looked all that convinced, that much was easy to tell. For all that Dean excelled at fooling everyone, he sucked at this. Truth was, Dean couldn't even convince himself that he was fine.

/(O|O)\\

The click of the door closing behind Sam was the signal Dean's insides had been waiting for to rebel yet again, or so it seemed. The roar of the Impala had barely cleared the parking lot and half of the toothpaste that Dean had swallowed, was already making its reverse way. The fluoride burned on its way up, bringing fresh tears to Dean's eyes as he kneeled by the toiled side.

"This fucking sucks," he informed the empty room.

When the nausea finally subsided enough for him to get up, Dean made his way back to the room. He had no idea how long Sam was going to be out, but he needed to start his research. He needed to put a name to the thing attacking him and he needed to kill it. Simple as that.

Just as long as Sam was distracted with his search for a way out of 'the deal', Dean could roam free and make sure that if that thing ever came back, he would be ready for it.

Fear was an old friend of Dean's. For all of his 'devil-may-care' and daredevil attitude, Dean knew what it was like to be scared shitless... he knew how it felt to have you heart beating so fast that you think it's gonna punch right out of your chest.

With the kind of work he did, that was pretty much a daily occurrence. What Dean wasn't use to was let that feeling paralyze him, to let himself fall so deeply in terror that he wasn't able to react. _'Fight what you fear, don't fear what you fight'_, his father used to say all the time.

And for that, Dean needed to know what the hell he was fighting.

Pulling his father's journal from his bag, Dean skipped over the pages looking for anything even remotely close to the thing that had attacked him. John hadn't written much about sex demons and most of what he had on humanoid beasts was related to werewolves and other shifters. There was nothing on bats there. Not even vampires, which John had all together skipped over.

As for sex demons, Dean himself had already faced a few. Well, two. One had been early on when he'd started hunting with his father. Dean, being the horny seventeen year old that he was at the time, made John figured that it was safer to keep his hormone ridden son as far away from the succubus that had been prowling on the men of Arcadia, Indiana, as possible, relegating him to research duty and backup. John himself had played the bait that time.

The second had been a succubus too, but Dean had been alone then. Sam had been at Stanford, John had been somewhere or another and Dean had found himself in Queens, New York City, following a clueless Ritchie and a hungry succubus to the shorter man's house.

Dean had never encountered a incubus, the male version of the two female demons he'd hunted before, but he highly doubted that they looked anything like bats. If anything, succubus and incubus were the epitome of human physical perfection, their appealing looks being their main weapon to lure their victims into their deaths. No one wanted to have sex with a bat.

Dean shuttered, a sudden chill raising goosebumps all over his arms, even thought the room was warm and he put on two more shirts over the thin one he'd slept in. Grabbing his coat from the back of the chair, Dean put that on too and sat back down on the bed.

The thing about succubus and incubus was that they fed on their victims' energy, sucking them dry as they drove them to the peeks of ecstasy. Dean had felt neither. There was no sapping of his energy going on, more like a nervous undercurrent of electricity under his skin, if anything; and there had definitely been no ecstasy involved.

So, maybe the sex part wasn't the main drive of this thing, Dean figured. He forced himself to recall every single detail that he could remember of either attacks, but the harder he thought, the foggier the whole thing became.

He'd been a hunter practically his whole life, trained by his father to pick up the little details that other people might not notice or find relevant, schooled to quickly evaluate and react to whatever fugly he faced.

It was frustrating and disappointing that, now that Dean needed it, the only details he could conjure were feelings and emotions. He could remember with painful detail what it felt like to be paralyzed and helpless while the bat monster attacked him, but he could not remember if it's legs were completely human or if it had, for example, hooves instead of feet; Dean could taste the scrape of sand against his lips, but he had no recollection of the thing's comings and goings, like it had somehow materialized out of thin air and vanished into the shadows.

Dean ran a hand through his hair, dropping the journal on the messy bed. This was useless. All he was accomplishing was making his heart beat like a racehorse and his head pound with the images he was recalling.

His eyes landed on Sam's laptop, abandoned on the table. Opening the lid, Dean checked for an Internet connection, certain that his geek brother wouldn't check them into any motel without making sure of that first.

Sure enough, as soon as Dean clicked on the search engine, the whole wide world of freaks and oddities was at his reach.

Remembering the dream like quality that both attacks had manifest, Dean started his search with night terrors and dream walkers. He knew of a couple of creatures that attacked people in their sleep, but those attacks were more of the kidnapping variety than the shoving dic—

Dean shook his head, pushing away memories and focusing instead on the list of creatures on the screen.

The Old Hag legend popped almost immediately. Dean had always heard of them being described as old women who sat on people's chests during their sleep, sending nightmares to their prey and paralyzing them with fear, but he'd never actually hunted one before.

Though he could see that the descriptions of weight on people's chest and the inability to move were eerily close to what he'd felt, the thing that had attacked him looked nothing like a woman. It was, in fact, of the wrong gender all together.

Digging deeper, however, revealed to him that the 'Hag' part had been a later addition to a far older beast, the _maras or mares_. They were, in fact, goblins, which made for a much closer and accurate description of them. They were also the very core of nightmares.

Dean figured that it wasn't that much of a stretch in between goblins, who often were depicted as half animal creatures, and a bat standing on two legs.

And goblins... goblins Dean knew how to kill. He just needed to figure a way to protect himself from the hold the creature had on him every single time it appeared . If Dean could move, he could kill it.

Goblins were vulnerable to specific runes, and Dean had a pretty good idea of which he could use to diminish its hold on him when it returned. Because there was not a doubt in his mind that the thing would be coming back that night.

Dean looked at the bed behind him, the tussled sheets that once might've looked inviting, held nothing but a promise of pain and humiliation now. Could he really make himself to lie there still and just wait to be assaulted again?

The idea alone brought fresh batches of sweat to his body, hands shaking over the keypad of the open laptop. As much as he tried to convince himself that this would be no different from all the other times he'd played bait, Dean couldn't fool himself.

There was a feeling of hopelessness that he could not shake competing with a fervent desire to see this creature writhing in pain that he could not fight.

Lost in thought, Dean barely noticed when the door opened and Sam walked back in. "You okay?" Were the first words out of Sam's mouth. One of the paper bags he had in his hands had a green cross on it, the other a grease stain. "AC broken or somethin'?"

Dean forced a smile on his face and slide down further on the bed, trying to look as comfortable as he could on top of the covers, taking the coat off as he went. "I was feeling a bit chilly," Dean admitted. "Be better once you share the drugs, little brother."

Sam just rolled his eyes, throwing the medicine bag at Dean's chest, like Dean had hoped he would, before disappearing in to the bathroom.

"Gessh... bathroom smells ripe," Sam said with a scrunched up face, handing over the glass of water he'd retrieved. "I'm going out again tonight," he announced as he watched Dean drown two more aspirins.

"Yeah?" Dean asked with his eyes closed and a smirk sneaking up on his lips. He knew exactly where Sam was going, but if he played his part right, Sam would be out of that room soon and give Dean enough time to prepare. "Found yourself a nice girl?"

"Quit being an ass," Sam let out, rolling his eyes for good measure. When his gaze settled once more on Dean, Sam realized how wiped his brother looked under all the banter and smart-assedy. "You okay?"

Dean nodded, even though the action sent his brain sloshing inside his head and threatened to disrupt the feeble truce he'd managed to make with his stomach. "Just... remind me not to mix beer and cheap scotch again, will ya?"

Sam just shook his head. "Brought some lunc... dinner," he amended, looking at his wristwatch. Dean had managed to sleep most of the day away, which wasn't surprising, given the sad hours they had stumbled into the new room the day before. Or the dawn of this one.

The younger Winchester stifled a yawn of his own, as he settled the cheeseburger and fries on the table. "Greasy food," he announced with a flourish. "Best known cure for hangover all around the world!"

From the way Dean's face went from flushed, to white to slightly green before he raced back into the bathroom, Sam figured that his brother wouldn't be eating any of that any time soon.

/(O|O)\\

When Dean left the bathroom, having run out of even bile to upchuck, Sam had, fortunately gotten rid of the cheeseburgers. The smell alone... Dean's stomach rebelled at the memory. "So, where are you going?" Dean found himself asking, for the sake of keeping up appearances. The more interest he showed for where Sam was going, the faster it was guaranteed that he'd be out the door.

Sam fidgeted in his seat, picking up the surviving sesame seeds that had fallen from his sandwich with the pad of his thumb, before clearing his throat and looking back at Dean.

"There's an old library near here," he started. "They only allow membership cards to people living there, so no way they'll lemme check out any of the books... and I found some really interesting ones-"

Dean was staring at the bed nearest to the door. He needed to pull it aside and draw the necessary runes under, where the Hag couldn't see it. John had several sets of runes in his journal, but Dean still wanted to check which ones were best to use in this particular situation. When Sam left, he'd better leave his computer behind. Dean was going to need that.

"—one with the original incantations used by supposed druids, found in this old convent in Denmark, that some old priest had gather—"

The runes were just one small part of it, though. They would make sure that Dean wasn't paralyzed when the attack begun, but he still needed to kill this thing. Iron worked best with these type of creatures and Dean figured that the best place to hide a blade would be under his pillow.

"—I suppose I could just copy the whole thing, but that will still take me a good couple of—"

Just to play it on the safe side, there were a couple more things that Dean would need to have on hand if the iron blade failed. Salt worked for just about every evil thing, at least to buy him some time; he had a flask of holy water that might've come in handy as well; and if all else failed, there was always fire. Granted, it would be a little hard to explain to Sam why he'd set their room on fire, but the satisfaction of watching that thing burn and die would make it more than worth it.

"Have you heard one word I just said?"

Dean blinked, realizing that he'd just tune out all of Sam's elaborate explanation of where he was going. His brother was looking expectantly at him, awaiting a convincing answer, apparently. If Dean failed to provide one, he feared Sam would never leave the damn room and allow him to get ready.

Dean plastered on his most convincing smirk. "Something about close spaces and lots of books?" he ventured.

Sam sighed a long suffering puff of air. "Dean—"

"Dude, I'll be fine... go play with your books to your heart's content," Dean told him honestly. "Just... remember to wash your hands when you're done."

"You're a pig, you know that?"

Dean still had his smile firmly in place when Sam finally closed the door behind himself and left.

/(O|O)\\

Chief Ahtuapu was already waiting for him when Sam finally showed up at the older man's trailer.

"You're late," he stated, closing the door behind his back and walking towards Sam as the taller man exited the Impala. "Let's go."

Sam stared at the man and the closed trailer. He figured they would be staying there like the night before, talking nonsense. "Where we going?" he asked, turning the ignition back on. The car purred in the night, silencing the surrounding crickets.

"To the camp," Ahtuapu simply said.

Sam followed the older man's instructions in silence. As far as he'd been able to dig up, there were no Indian Reservations in those parts, not for Ahtuapu's tribe anyway. When they reached the end of the dirt road that he'd been driving for the last hour though, Sam realized that he'd clearly missed something.

The Cahuillas' 'camp' wasn't that big, but still he could see more than a dozen tents, scattered around in a man-made clearing and surrounded by California redwoods. Evergreens. In Nevada.

"We're here," Ahtuapu said solemnly. "You can park over there."

Sam did as he was told, parking the Impala next to a green pickup truck, before following the Indian outside. He had no idea why he'd been brought to that place.

Just the night before, Ahtuapu had seemed reluctant to share with him even the basics of his tribe's knowledge, stuff that Sam could've easily dug up in the Internet. And today, here he was, invited to a place that was, obviously, not known to many.

"What is this place?" Sam found himself asking as they made their way to the center of the tents.

Ahtuapu silenced him with a finger over his lips. Sam soon realized why.

The group that sat around the tall fire in the middle of the living arrangements was chanting in a low key. Sam couldn't understand what they were saying, but the sad cadence and the heaviness that permeated the air made it easy for him to figure the contents of the lyrics.

They were mourning.

One voice rose above the others, a woman with long white hair, and the pain in her chant raised goosebumps all over Sam's arms. Whoever had passed, she was family.

"What happened?" Sam whispered. He felt even more of an intruder, sensing the eyes of the few who had taken notice of his presence heavy on his back.

"Straw String took his own life," Ahtuapu whispered back, pointing to the chanting woman. "That is his mother, Morning Dew. She is the one who found him."

The Indian stood quiet after that, listening to the pained words being sang. Sam tried to shrink back his imposing height, but it was nearly impossible to not stand out. "Why did you bring me here?" he ended up asking.

"Straw String was not the first of our young men to do this," Ahtuapu whispered, the pain in his voice making the man sound sincere for the first time since Sam met him. "I need your help to make sure that he is the last one that we lose in this manner."

Sam looked back at the gathered group, the others joining the singing and softly swinging from side to side, enveloping the grieving woman. "I... I don't understand." Tragic as it was, for a young man to take his own life, Sam couldn't even imagine how was he supposed to help with that. "I'm just a—"

"A hunter," Ahtuapu cut in, silencing Sam with a stare that dared to tell otherwise. "Which is exactly whom we need to fight the demon that caused this."

Sam just stared at the man, divided between denying it and intrigued both at how the man had figured it out and how he could be so sure about what had caused this.

"What makes you think that I can do anything about this?" Sam finally asked.

"Students don't come around asking specific questions about the supernatural like you did," the man said with a tense smile. "And they certainly don't walk around with protection sigils tattooed to their chests."

Sam looked down, for some reason needing to make sure that the anti-possession symbol above his heart was covered. How had the other man...

The heat inside the trailer the previous night popped to the front of Sam's memory and he couldn't help but smirk. The sneaky man had done it on purpose, slowly boiling Sam until he had no other choice but to unbutton his shirt or pass out from the heat. That was why the Indian man had told him to come back, despite the fact that he'd done nothing but waste Sam's time and mock him the entire time they'd talked before. Sam suspected that, if he hadn't seen that tattoo, Ahtuapu wouldn't have asked him to return at all.

"You know someone that made a bad deal, don't you?" Ahtuapu's voice cut through Sam's thoughts.

Sam nodded. It was, after all, the reason why he'd come in search of the Cahuilla Chief. There was no point in hiding it.

"I have a tribe that is being hunted by a beast that we can not fight with prayers and herbs. Help me," the older man said with a solemn look in his dark eyes, "and I will help you."

Sam straightened his back, no longer feeling like his presence there was an imposition, a voyeur to the pain these people had suffered. Ahtuapu was right. This was what he and Dean did, and if these people had a demon problem, it was their duty to help them. The fact that their help made sure that the Indian chief would tell Sam what he needed to do was just an added bonus.

"Tell me everything that you know," Sam simply said.

TBC


	6. Chapter 5

What has happened so far:

With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper.

Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities.

Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare.

Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels.

The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests.

When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins.

In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal.

This is what happens next...

* * *

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\FIVE

The indigo sky was starting to gain some of the soft pink shades of pre-dawn by the time Sam returned to their motel room. The conversation with Ahtuapu had taken him far too long for him to explain or even pass off as a simple visit to the library, but given what he'd heard, Dean would need to be told, sooner or later, that they had a new hunt in this place. One far more urgent and important than a mere Chupacabra.

With a bit of luck, Sam could probably stall telling everything to his brother for a little while longer. Maybe Dean was still asleep and wouldn't be any wiser as to the late hour Sam was arriving.

Before he had left, Sam had noticed the deep lines of exhaustion around Dean's eyes and across his brow. However, unlike most people, who will slow down and become more and more lethargic as they grow tired, Dean was, like in some many other things, the antitheses of normal.

Exhausted Dean was like a live wire, sizzling with barely contained energy that burned hot, even if it was a short-term effect. Eager as Dean had appeared and sounded to get Sam out of that room, Sam was sure that his brother had crashed and was dead to the world five minutes after Sam closed the door.

Which was why Sam had left earlier than he had needed. Dean was still recovering from their previous day's misadventure in the desert and the havoc that alcohol had caused in his body hadn't helped matters. A good night's sleep would do wonders for him.

Sam, on the other hand, was going to have a hard time turning his brain off.

Ahtuapu had taken his sweet time spilling the beans, but once the old man had started his tale, there was no way to stop him. It was a grim one.

From what the Indian Chief had been told by the several family members of those affected, several young men in their camp were being attacked by something that would sneak into their tents at night, without anyone noticing anything. Most of the victims, the ones still alive at least, six men in total so far, had all told the Chief the same tale: they could not move before, during or after the assault, no matter how much they had struggled and tried to scream.

The details on how the attacks had happened and of what had been responsible for them were, at best, a little sketchy. The victims who had taken their own lives hadn't said why, and those still alive weren't talking much about the matter, according to the older man.

The three young men who had committed suicide had been seen around the camp, looking drawn and gloomy. Drained. Scared.

One of them had, apparently, spent a whole week refusing to sleep in own his tent, offering no explanation for his odd behavior.

He had been the first one to slit his wrists, a single message of _'I will never tell. This ends now._' left behind.

Ahtuapu had first suspected that someone from the outside was coming into their camp to terrorize the young men of the tribe. It wasn't often that they were met with such problems, but it was known to happen from time to time. The dead boy's message seemed clear that he was being pressed to keep his mouth shut, probably even menaced.

The police had been called then, but with no evidence of the attacks and no witnesses, the authorities had been quick to dismiss the tales that the young men tales had told and to treat them as nothing but loons.

The whole camp was a bundle of nerves from that point on. Sentries had been posted around the tents and homemade alarm mechanisms spread all around; everyone on alert, everyone ready and eager to stop the attacks from ever happening ever again.

Despite their every precaution, another young man was attacked. His wife, who had spent the night with a friend who had just been a mother and needed assistance, had arrived in the morning to find her husband white as chalk and mute as a tree. It had taken them a whole week to realize that, despite all of their diligences and care, evil had still managed to enter their homes. He hadn't been the last one.

In the quiet of the night, no one had heard a single thing out of the ordinary and, despite being terrified, something that those who knew the stricken young man could easily see- he hadn't done a thing to defend himself. Not even a call for help.

And that, more than anything, was what confused Ahtuapu. Theirs was a close-knit tribe. They looked out for each other. And while all of those who were attacked had been young men more than capable of defending themselves, they all knew that all they had to do was give a single shout for help and at least five strong men and as many women would race to their help. None had called. And none could tell why.

And that was when the tribe realized that this was not an enemy that they could fight with caution and weapons. Always with one foot in this world and the other in the world beyond, the Cahuillas were fast to realize that they were fighting something beyond human, beyond natural.

They turned to the Spirits for help.

They had tried every protection charm chant and prayer that they could think of, but still the attacks persisted.

Straw String had been the last death, just three days before.

His mother, who had moved in closer to her child when word of the attacks started to spread, had been on the next tent over. She had not heard a single sound.

Straw String did not say a word, but they could guess that he had been attacked two, maybe three times before he took his own life, each assault leaving him more and more fragile until he was nothing but a shell of the happy boy who had grown up amongst them.

The young man had refused to give specifics to anyone over what had happen, but those who knew could tell that something bad had happened. The boy's eyes were overwrought, the soul behind them shattered. Family and friends had been helpless, watching the lively young man wither away until he was found dead in a pool of his own blood.

Sam would need to go back and see the tents where the attacks had occurred, maybe persuade Ahtuapu to let him talk with the surviving boys. Also, the bodies of the victims had been delivered to county and Sam was eager to find out if an autopsy had been performed on any of them. It wasn't customary to have them done on suicide victims, but Sam was sure that with so many deaths in such a short span of time, no matter the cause, it would certainly peek someone's interest.

It wasn't much to start with, but Sam agreed with Ahtuapu. There was something supernatural preying on the men of that tribe, even if he still didn't know enough to venture a guess. From what the old man had told him, it sounded like something was feeding off those men and doing it in a way they left them either amnesic of the attacks, or too embarrassed to talk about them.

Any other group of people, and Sam would assume that the silence on the victims' part was because of their fear of being labeled as lunatics. He and Dean had seen it happen often enough, when people tried to find the most reasonable and 'normal' explanation for what had happened to them, instead of admitting that the out-of-ordinary was possible.

Madison had convinced herself that her werewolf attack had been just a regular mugging; the girl who had drunk the vampire blood and turned into a vampire herself had thought that she was drugged and hallucinating herself biting other people's necks; heck! authorities had told John Winchester that Mary had been killed by an electric fire in the walls, despite the fact that they found some of her skin glued to the ceiling...

The Cahuilla, however, didn't have the same narrow-minded view of the common citizen. They're world, their traditions told them that the supernatural was as much as part of reality as Nature was. So, if the victims weren't talking, it was because they either couldn't or because shame was silencing them.

Unfortunately for the tribe, there were too many creatures out there that fed on humans. Vampires, wraiths, succubus, pagan gods... the list went on and on until the whole alphabet was spent.

The repetition of the attacks though, plus the fact that all the victims were young men in the prime of their sexual energy, the shame that the boys displayed at having succumbed to the attacks...

The younger Winchester stopped his train of thought when he reached the motel room. The lights were all out, which meant that Dean was probably asleep, giving Sam at least a couple of hours to think of a way to spring this new hunt on his brother, hopefully without sounding like he had tricked him into coming to this place for other reasons. Well, that part was true, but now, at least, Sam could honestly say to his brother that he had no idea that the Cahuilla tribe was having this sort of problem... their sort of problem.

Dean didn't needed to know about Sam's arrangement with Ahtuapu. In fact, given the terms of the deal that Dean had made with that crossroads demon, Sam was sure that Dean _wouldn't_ want to know.

It was just one more item in the long line of screwed up things in their lives: the fact that lying and tricking his brother was okay, because Sam would die otherwise.

Sam closed the door gently behind his back, careful not to wake Dean. It took one passing car with too sharp headlights, flooding the room in gray, fleeting light, for Sam to realize that all his care had been a waste of time. Both beds were empty.

This was becoming a nasty habit.

Sam grasped his room key tightly and stared at the empty room, the familiar concern burning at the pit of his stomach as he realized that Dean was, once again, nowhere to be seen.

Sam looked at his watch. Four a.m.

It was too early in the morning for his brother to have gone out to get breakfast, or even for one his occasional morning jogs. And then again, it was too late for him to be at some piss poor bar. There were none within walking distance this time, so at least Sam was sure that Dean couldn't be far.

The bed at least looked slept in. The sheets were rustled, more like wrestled, but when he put a hand on them, they were already cold. Wherever Dean was, he'd been up for awhile now. "Dean?"

The sound of something crusty under his feet made Sam look down. Salt.

There was a mess of rock salt on the floor. Usually, as soon as they arrived to a new place, no matter how tired, or how much they ached for some rest, lines of salt across the door and windows were never forgotten. It was always the very first thing that either of them did, usually the one more capable of standing on his own at the time.

This line was nowhere near any of the room's entry points. It was around one of the beds. Dean's bed.

The bathroom light was on, but even from where he stood, Sam could see that Dean wasn't there. The nasty smell, however, had moved from the tiny division to fill the whole room. It wasn't just the smell of vomit. There was something else in there, a weird mix between putrefaction and seashore.

There was glass on the floor, near the far wall, a matching dent on the white plaster that told the tale of something breakable being tossed against it. The glass of water that Sam had left by the bed, when Dean had taken the Aspirin, was gone.

Sam had no idea what was eating at his brother, but he intended to ask him as soon as he found Dean. Closing the door behind him, Sam weighed his options. The motel's office was closed at that hour and the only business located in the vicinity were a half dilapidated gas station and a pawnshop across the street. Both were closed and with their lights out. Other than that, just a road, stretching to the left and right of the motel.

Dean wasn't exactly the 'take a walk' type, but unless he'd broken into another motel room, there wasn't anyplace else he could be. Sam had come from the left and he hadn't seen his brother on the side of the road, so he guessed that left him to search the road on the right.

The sound of something hitting the ground was muffled, but Sam looked anyway. A cat looked up guiltily from the trashcan where it was perched, but the mess of scattered cartons and empty boxes on the ground wasn't enough to justify what Sam had heard.

It was the boot that called Sam's attention. He'd recognize that brown, scuffed boot anywhere, even in the dim light of pre-dawn in a nearly abandoned parking lot of a sleazy motel.

Dean's boot.

Dumbly looking around for the matching pair and, hopefully, the man who was supposed to be wearing them, Sam was met with absolute emptiness. And he was sure that damn boot hadn't been there five minutes ago, when he'd parked the Impala and made his way to the room.

Apart from teleportation, there was only one place from where that boot could've come from.

Looking up, towards the roof of the motel, Sam could see a man's silhouette, cut against the pinkish sky. "Dean?"

/(O|O)\\

If he could have, Dean would have laughed at the irony of the situation. Every single hunt that he'd been on, every thing that he had fought either with Sam, dad or even alone, Dean had been well aware of the consequences. It was a dangerous job and no matter how well prepared they went or how good they were at what they did, sometimes things just got messy.

Dad used to have an expression for those hunts.

FUBAR.

Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.

Somehow, Dean figured this was not what John Winchester, or the U.S. Military for that matter, had in mind when they thought up that particular acronym.

The thing had come again, that much Dean had gotten right. The goblin part? Not so much.

The runes had done absolutely nothing to stop the creature from paralyzing Dean and from _using_ him the same way it had on the two previous occasions.

Dean had thought that having a monster's dick shoved up his ass or down his throat was the worse thing that could be done to him. He'd been wrong about that too.

This time, the bat-thing wasn't content with just getting off… it had tried to get Dean off as well. And that, more than any invasion, had shattered Dean's core.

Because he had. God help him, he'd actually gotten off as that thing had ra… attacked him.

The bat's touch had been warm, almost scalding when it had gripped him and started tugging and pulling. Jerky movements that Dean hadn't identified for what they were until it was too late and his body, already on the edge from the adrenaline and anger, reacted and Dean came pathetically fast. Like a teenager on his first date.

What kind of sick fuck did that?

The thing had left him with the same parting words as the night before.

_Tell him or I will return._

How could Dean possibly tell something like this to Sam? Why would he even want to that to his little brother?

It was bad enough that he was checking out and leaving Sam alone in just a couple of months… if Dean dumped this too on Sam's shoulders, he feared neither of them would be able to cling to their sanity.

Dean had no idea how he'd ended up on the roof of the motel. All he remembered was the feeling of being trapped, of not being able to move no matter how hard he wanted to escape. He sat and watched as his unlaced boot sled from his socked foot and fell down below, somewhere between rooms 21 and 25.

"Dean?"

Dean blinked awake, not quite sure if he'd been asleep or just –out- and almost jumped up when he realized that Sam was standing right behind him, on the edge of the ladder that gave access to the tar-covered roof. Heated by the warm sun all day long, the black surface still retained some warmth. It had helped a little with the shakes coursing through Dean's body.

"Dean? Come on, man… I've been calling you for ages," Sam's voice called out again. "What the hell are you doing up here anyway?"

Dean turned, catching the concerned look on his brother's eyes. "Getting some fresh air," he finally said, glad that his voice, at least, held none of the despair that was corroding his soul. Turning back towards the front of the roof, Dean leaned backwards until his back touched the warm surface of the roof. Despite the increase in light, above them, the stars were still easy to see.

Sam settled down next to him, shoulders close enough for fabric to touch. Despite the proximity, it felt like each of them was alone up there. It was enough for Sam to voice the matter that had been worrying him ever since Dean's drunken bender the night before. He'd tried breaching the subject before leaving to meet Ahtuapu, only to have Dean cut him off with the usual claim that he was fine.

Dean wasn't fine, and it was high time he learned that he wasn't fooling anyone with his tough guy act.

"I know you're scared Dean," Sam started, hoping that Dean wouldn't stop him before he'd been able to say his part. "And I can't possibly understand what it's like to lie down every night and know that this thing is _right there_, waiting for you, looming in the horizon. But..."

Dean was tensing beside him, growing more and more agitated as Sam talked. Sam could only imagine how hard it was for his usually stoic brother to hear Sam talking about this without bolting away, but this thing, these sleepless nights and the constant fright, it could not go on. Dean needed to understand that he wasn't alone, that Sam was right there beside him.

"We still have time, Dean," Sam went on, resting a hand over his brother's arm. Dean's muscles felt like they were vibrating, tense to the point of breaking. "You're not going to Hell. We're not giving up."

/(O|O)\\

Dean was ready to bolt. Sam's words were so close to the truth that, for a moment, Dean was sure that his brother had arrived to the motel room earlier and had watched what had happened. Sam _knew_, Dean was sure of that, and his breath was caught in his chest for so long that it had somehow solidified into a giant ball, pressing against his ribs. It hurt.

When Dean realized that Sam was talking about the deal and the rapidly approaching deadline, he almost sighed in relief.

How fucked up was it that he actually felt more at ease with the prospect of spending eternity in Hell rather than have his brother know about what was happening, finding out about what that monster was doing to Dean and how weak Dean was for not being able to fight it off?

"I know man," Dean eventually said, when he was sure that his voice wouldn't betray his real feelings. Sam was hell bent on finding a way out of the deal for him and Dean would rather have him concerned about that than with other matters. "Did you find out what you were looking for?"

Beside him, Sam cleared his throat.

"Actually," Sam said, voice filled with a level of enthusiasm that felt fake. "I found us a hunt."

"A hunt?" Dean was confused. He sat up and crossed his legs Indian-style, facing his brother. "I thought we already had a hunt."

Sam shrugged. The Chupacabra wasn't really hurting anyone and they both knew that it had been just an excuse to enjoy some fun times. "The Chupacabra can wait. There's something driving young men to suicide in an Native American camp near here," Sam told Dean.

"Indians, hum?" Dean said, eyes planted on his brother, trying to figure out how long it would take for Sam to come clean. Anyway he put it though, Dean was game for it. For one, people dying was not something that they could just ignore and walk away from, and second... anything that got them away from that place was fair game for Dean.

He needed time to do proper research, he needed time to recover and to find a fucking way to get some sleep without getting attacked. Two nights in a row without a wink of sleep, and Dean was already feeling exhausted. More than exhausted, he was feeling defeated and that was not something that sat well with his personality. He needed distance and a fighting plan.

/O|O\\

For a moment, when Sam finally suggested that they should go back to their room, he was sure that Dean was going to throw a fit similar to the drunken one of the night before. It was only a split second reaction, one that Sam would've missed entirely if he hadn't been looking straight in to his brother's eyes, but it was there. The widening of pupils, the subtle flare of his nostrils, the flash of white teeth as he bit his lower lip before nodding.

As they moved inside, if Sam didn't know better, he would think that Dean was doing recon on some vampire-infested nest, rather than the vanilla motel room where they were staying in.

Tension rolled off Dean's shoulders like foaming water on the shore. Sam spared a look around, trying to figure out what had his brother so on the edge, but no matter where he looked, the only thing he could see was mold stains, old wallpaper and ratty bed covers. There wasn't anything remotely menacing on that place, except for a few bugs and the nasty smell.

"It's late," Sam started, looking at the light peeking from between the flimsy drapes on the window. "… Or rather, it's early. We should get some shut eye."

Another nod from Dean, even as Sam watched him pick up the discarded laptop from the table and settle with it on his bed.

"You go ahead," Dean said, opening the computer. The blue light cast deep shadows under his eyes and the hollow of his cheeks, making him look older and just… spent. Empty. "I'm gonna check that story of yours, see if I can find any record of something similar."

Sam sighed, raising himself on one elbow to look at his brother. Dean looked like he needed the sleep more than he did. "Dean—"

"Sam," Dean cut in. "I'm fine, dude… I slept some earlier… just—don't worry about me."

Sam closed his eyes, more to hide the disappointment in them than in any true expectation of falling asleep. _'Don't worry about me'_… like Dean really thought that Sam had any choice in the matter.

/O|O\\

Dean's fingers trembled as he poised them over the keyboard. He had no intention of researching the thing preying on the Native Americans campsite. They simply didn't have enough information to go on, not before they actually talked to some of the victims or got their eyes on the coroner's report. Until then, Dean had other concerns. More personal concerns.

The thing that had attacked him was gone now, but there was no guarantee that it wouldn't come back for seconds on the same night. Or even that it wouldn't want a taste of Sam next.

The thought of that monster laying its filthy paws on Sam, doing to his little brother what it had done to Dean...

He shivered, pushing the memory away.

It hadn't been a Hag. Or a goblin. Or anything related with what he had researched the previous day.

The search field in the computer screen was waiting for Dean to type something, anything, but his mind was blank.

Whatever this thing was, it was some corporeal being that they hadn't ever encountered before. _If_ it had a body all the time, something that Dean wasn't even sure of at that point. Because, otherwise, how could he explain the fact that the bat-monster had entered the room, despite the locked doors, the protection sigils on the door and window frames, and the salt ring that Dean had drawn around his bed?

Salt stopped almost every evil thing that Dean knew about. Demons, spirits, wraiths, thought forms...

It didn't stop mutated beings, though. He doubted a shapeshifter would even think twice before crossing a salt line. Or a werewolf. Maybe this thing was some sort of werebat that they'd never heard before?

If that was so, Dean knew perfectly well how to end it. Silver bullet to the heart. The only problem was that, if the thing got near enough for him to actually test his theory, Dean wouldn't be able to move enough to shoot it.

He could, Dean figured, tell everything to Sam and set a trap for the bat-thing. But that would involve two things that were possibly the last ones that Dean wanted right now: for Sam to know about what had happened to him and to have his little brother anywhere near that damn thing.

As much as Dean abhorred being that thing's toy, it would kill him if Sam fell into its clutches.

No, what Dean needed to do was find where that thing hid and fight it on its own turf. Away from Sam.

/O|O\\

It was past noon when Sam roused himself from sleep, surprised that he'd rested at all. He kept waiting for Dean to close the laptop and lie down as well, but now, hours later, Sam opened his eyes to find Dean in the exact same position he'd left him: leaning against the bed's headboard, computer supported by crossed legs and eyes fixed on the screen.

Sam doubted that his brother had even taken a break. His eyes were squinting, in the way Dean usually squint when his eyes were too tired from reading and he was too stubborn to go get his glasses.

"You'll get blind going at it like that," he offered, pulling the covers aside and planting his feet on the floor. His bladder was killing him for some attention.

On the other bed, Dean startled at the sound of Sam's voice, apparently forgotten that there was someone else in the room.

The page in front of him had a black background and tiny white letters. When Dean looked up at Sam, the letters followed his vision around.

Dean rubbed his eyes hard, unsurprised by the feeling of gritty sand under his lids. He was fairly sure that he hadn't fallen asleep in between Sam lying down and now, but he had no idea of what he'd done or what he'd been looking at on the computer either. The sense of lost time settled like a brick in Dean's stomach.

"Found anything?" Sam pressed on, moving towards the bathroom.

Dean looked at the open page again. It was something on early myths of sentient beings and pagan gods. It was a long shot from sick-freak bats.

"Nothing," Dean finally answered, closing the laptop. Placing it on top of the bed covers, Dean rushed up to stretch. Seated in the same position for so long had filled his body with kinks and knots, not to mention adding extra stiffness to the bruises he was supporting from the attacks.

The minute he got to his feet, Dean felt himself almost topple over. The walls did a crazy wave pattern at the edge of his eyes and the floor rushed up, threatening to swallow him. Carefully pulling a breath in, Dean closed his eyes and waited for the vertigo to pass. He needed coffee. That was it. This was just his body warning him that the caffeine levels in his blood were below normal.

"You okay?" Sam voiced from the bathroom door, leaning against the frame. It felt like lately, that was all Sam asked.

"Fine... just got up too fast, I supposed," Dean let out, angry at himself for looking weak. If there ever was a point in his life when he needed to look strong, where he needed to overcome his weakness, that time was now. He knew he was dog-tired and he knew that there was only so long that he could keep up with the sleepless nights before Sam became suspicious. But he fully intended on having killed that thing long before that time came.

They ended up deciding it would be faster if they split up. Sam wanted to check the nation wide records, thinking that they might be able to find if anything like this had happened there before and Dean wanted to check the body of the kid who'd killed himself before it was released to the family for the funeral services.

After dropping Sam at the local library, Dean headed to the town's coroner.

Today, he would be Ted Turner, from the Center of Disease Control, investigating the sudden onset of string suicides in a closed community.

"You guys are fast," the coroner in charge, a rotund Dr. Jacob, spared a fleeting glance over the glasses perched on his nose, at the credentials that Dean presented him with before leading him down a dark corridor. "It was just this morning that I filed that report."

Dean tried to hide the surprise from his face. As far as Sam had told him, this was just a suicide. The fact that he'd shown up as a CDC officer was only because flashing an FBI badge would call too much attention. Apparently, from what he was hearing, it had been the right call.

"Yeah... office kind of misplaced your report," Dean started, looking apologetic when the man turned to look at him. "You know how these things are... papers are easy to miss," he went on. "But I'm here now, so..."

The man took the cue that Dean was offering him, as he'd hoped he would.

"I'd print another one, but I fear you'd end up losing that one too," the coroner chided him. "I found an uncommon hormone in the blood work of the latest deceased, so uncommon that it made me go back and check out the other ones from that Native American camp," the man went on, flicking the lights on in the cold room where they'd arrive. "Turns out, all the suicidal young men had the same hormone present in their blood. Which made me think that these suicides, might not be suicides at all... might be something environmental. Something that would've killed them anyway."

"How so?"

The man opened the thick door of the freezer at the end of the room, picking up a round flask from the collection of round flasks inside.

"You see this?" the coroner asked, holding a transparent, plastic container. "I found this inside the kid, attached to his stomach lining."

Inside, Dean could see a glob of flesh, about the size of an orange, floating in some liquid. "What is that?" Dean asked, trying not to look too hard at the thing. The tendrils hanging from different points of the glob looked like waving arms, or tentacles.

"First I thought it was some sort of neoplastic growth. A tumor of some sort. It seemed to be behaving much in the same manner, newborn cells that started by feeding off the host's circulatory system and on it's way to developing one of its own. But there were no cancer markers in the kid's blood work and this thing... it doesn't look like any tumor I've ever seen."

"So... what is it?"

"Beats me," the man added with a shrug, storing the disturbing glob of flesh back in the freezer. "I was about to send it to you guys, so that the big wigs could run some more tests. But my best guess? It's some new kind of disease that we've never even heard before."

"So, you think something in the camp is making these kids sick... making these things grown in them?"

"Well, I can't ask for the bodies exhumation until I have a name for that thing, and I can't prove it's environmental until I get a look at the other kids, but yeah, that possibility is definitely on the table."

Dean nodded, making a mental note to find out just exactly how many guys had been attacked in the camp. If this thing was inside one, they would need to check the others too.

"Can I see the body?"

The other man just nodded, pointing Dean to a side table. "Put on one of each and follow me," he said, donning himself with a pair of gloves and a surgical mask.

The young Native American man was the only corpse in the small, refrigerated room at the back of the autopsy room. He had a sheet that covered him from the waist down and an ugly Y cut on his chest that only accentuated the bruising that extended from his collarbone to his navel. The kid didn't look older than nineteen.

"How did he killed himself?"

"Exsanguination," the coroner told him, lifting the edge of the sheet up. "Cut his genitals off."

Dean winced, looking at the damage the young man had done to himself. "That's not a very common way to do it... any idea why?" Dean asked, using his gloved hand to pick up the boy's hand. His left wrist had a dark bruise all around, like he'd been restrained. Taking notice of Dr. Jacob's silence, Dean looked up, finding the man staring at him again. "What?"

"I guess your office misplace the _whole_ damn file," the man muttered to himself. "There were visible signs of sexual assault on the kid. Repeated acts of sodomy, as far as I can tell."

Dean dropped the corpse's hand, feeling the room spin around him.

"And just between you and me, that kind of thing can mess a whole lot with a guy's mind... some just don't manage to get on with their lives..."

Dean wasn't listening anymore. It was impossible for him not to realize the similarities between what had happened to him and what the kid lying in the morgue table had gone through. The nature of the attacks, the bruises in the wrists and chest...

Dean pressed a hand to his stomach, remembering the feeling of something going down his throat in one of the attacks. _Oh... God..._

"Hey, guy," the coroner called out, hand reaching out to touch Dean's elbow. "You feeling okay?"

Dean flinched away from the touch even before it could happen, arms flying wild and jumping away from the older man, sending a pile of sterilized basins to the floor with a clattering sound of thunder.

"I'—sorry about that," Dean stuttered, nervously wiping the sweat that had gathered above his upper lip. he couldn't even focus on his surroundings, everything mixing in a glob f gray. "Guy cutting off his own balls... kind of... messes up a dude, you know?" Dean offered lamely, wanting nothing more than to get out of that place. He took a deep breath, pinching his own leg hard to keep himself grounded. It worked, to some extent. "Could I... could I have a copy –another copy, I guess-, of your report?"

/O|O\\

Sam had found out a lot more than what he'd hoped for. What ever this thing was, it wasn't the first time it had struck.

A trail of several young men committing suicide was not easy to spot unless you were looking for them, which Sam was.

It was clear that this thing liked to target specific communities at a time.

In a report dating back from 2005, Kingman, Arizona, Sam found five suicides, all Asian men, between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three, occurring in the span of a single week. Those who had known the young men had said that they'd been severely depressed, despite the fact that one was set to be married a few weeks after and two others had been offered full scholarship rides for Phoenix University. The reasons for what had happened were never made clear and the matter had been let go.

In 1997, Long Beach, California, a group of six Uganda refugees from had died in less than a month, all in the same neighborhood, all diagnosed with depression and lack of energy. Authorities had called it 'survivors' guilt.

Same thing in 2001, Yuma, Arizona, three African emigrants, two brothers and the oldest's son, all killed themselves in the same night, after a week of complaints from the neighbors about weird noises and after-midnight disturbances.

The one that called Sam's attention, however, was the report of ten inmates at a prison near Carson City, Nevada, killing themselves in the span of two months, less than a year before. Prior to their deaths, at least six of them had asked for relocation to a new cellblock, allegedly because of sexual harassment complaints. The prison director ordered the men checked for signs of assault and, when all six checked out, he agreed with the inmates' requests. They ended up taking their own lives anyway, even after being moved.

There wasn't much linking all the deaths, but Sam had seen connecting dots fainter than that. All of the deaths were clustered together, all of them were young men and, even though that wasn't proved in every single case, Sam was sure that all of them had been sexually assaulted in some way.

And the pattern of the victims' clusters... first the California shore in '97, then slowly making it's way inland through Arizona, until the most recent attacks in Nevada... it was on the move and everything pointed out for it being there, now.

The lack of energy and depression that all the victims seemed to present would spell depression for anyone else looking at the cases. But Sam had been around long enough, and knew enough about supernatural beings to understand that things weren't always as they seemed.

There were creatures that fed on specific energies, like the shtrigas and rusalkas, that fed on the victims' life force; or the wraiths and the maras, who fed on the victims' fear.

There was only one creature, however, that fed on sexual energy. Sex demons. Succubus and Incubus.

The female form, Succubus, was well known for seducing men and tricking them into giving her their semen, usually stealing their energy too in the process. The male form, Incubus, was usually the one who took the stolen semen and used it to impregnate women with demon seed.

These men hadn't obviously been pregnant, so Sam's money was on a Succubus preying on them.

What he couldn't get was why this one –if it was the same one responsible for all the attacks over the years- was hitting specific groups.

What Sam was certain, however, was that this thing needed to be stopped. And demons? Those he and Dean knew how to send back to Hell.


	7. Chapter 6

What has happened so far:

With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper.

Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities.

Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare.

Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels.

The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests.

When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins.

In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal.

Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California.

Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body.

The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp.

This is what happens next...

**

* * *

**

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\SIX

After losing his stomach lining at the corner of the coroner's office and Main Street, Dean seemed to lose track of the events that followed. One minute he was staring at the mess he'd made on top of the sports page of some discarded newspaper abandoned on the floor and the next he was staring at his own reflection on a jewelry shop window.

He must have been there for a while. Inside, a stuck up man, thin as spaghetti and with hair so tidy and straight that it looked more like a wig, was sending him warning looks. Either come in and spend money or haunt another shop.

Dean pushed away, the dimming sunlight telling him that at least an hour had gone by. What had happened in between? And why the hell couldn't he remember? He wasn't all that far from the coroner's office. Had he been at that window, staring at himself all that time?

Sam would be waiting for him out at County office, so that the two of them could drive back to the Cahuillas' camp and get ready to kill that thing tonight. The _thing_ that had been attacking those young men in exactly the same way that it had attacked Dean.

The hunter palmed his stomach. It rumbled with hunger, but other than that, he felt normal. And yet... he had seen the mass in the doc's fridge, the glob he had taken out of the young man's stomach. What if Dean had something like that too? What if there was something nasty growing inside him?

Nausea threatened to do a repeat show and Dean started moving, ignoring the discomfort, the pain and the feeling of a giant black chasm chasing his every step. He could see the coroner's office two buildings away. He'd left his car parked on the side street.

In the opposite direction, a couple of buildings ahead, Dean could see the library's entrance.

There was something about what Sam had told him about the Cahuilla victims and a detail that the coroner had mention that had Dean thinking.

Throwing a quick glance at his watch and figuring that when Sam was tired of waiting for him he would call, Dean headed to the library instead. He needed to be sure before he could even form a theory.

The Djinn were the main piece in the puzzle that he was starting to put together. A while back, Dean had fallen into the clutches of one of those blue tattooed freaks. The thing had trapped him in a world of illusions, feeding off Dean's blood while pumping him with some kind of supernatural acid that made him believe that Mary and Jessica were still alive and that a chick from some beer commercials was his dream woman.

Later, after Sam had found him and they had killed the Djinn, while they were checking up at the hospital on the young woman who had been rescued alongside Dean, her doctors had used the exact same words as the coroner has just used: _'an uncommon hormone'_.

While the medical team at the hospital where they'd checked in the other Djinn's victim hadn't been able to give a name to the compound, the man in charge of the investigation had said that it acted as a sort of neurotoxin, altering the brains perception of reality. It also caused an important brain chemistry imbalance that, the doctor had ventured, could lead to severe depression.

At the time, Dean hadn't been under the influence of the Djinn long enough to suffer the after effects of it's hormone, but he had still felt like crap in the weeks following his captivity. However, in between the fact that he was still mourning John's death and that he'd just had his mother taken away from his life a second time, Dean hardly noticed the added sense of depression.

And there was the message that one of the kids had left behind '_I will never tell'_. Sam had said that the Chief had assumed it to be a sign of some kind of threat for silence. Dean was beginning to wonder if they'd all gotten it wrong and actually meant the exact opposite.

The monster's parting words had been about sharing what had happened to him, about telling Sam what had been done to him.

'_Tell him, or I'll be back'_. The words were engraved in Dean's memory, branded in fire and pain. And Dean had reacted exactly like the kid who'd left the message. He too would never tell.

Dean couldn't be sure before he checked a couple of things at the library, but he was almost certain he now knew what they were dealing with. And if that were the case, he'd need to make a stop at the local butcher's shop.

/(O|O)\\

Unlike what Sam believed, not all useable knowledge came from books.

It had been little more than a drunken side talk at the Road House, while Dean was waiting for Ash to geek him out some information. The man had had more than a few and was loudly telling his drinking buddies -and anyone else who wanted to hear- how he had single-handedly saved a whole town in Africa from a monster that had been fucking their young men to death.

Dean couldn't remember how the hunter described the monster, or even how he managed to kill it, but the man had announced more than once that, had one of the victims not spilled the whole beans about what had happened and what had been done to him, the hunter's ass would've been history because he would have never guessed that he'd been facing a mutate Djinn.

That had been the word he had used. Mutated.

Unlike his earlier attempts in the motel room, when Dean was faced with the computer's empty space where the search word should be, Dean knew now exactly what to type.

The answer showed up so easily that Dean felt like crying as he scanned the news reports on the first attacks in a Tanzanian island, Pemba. The clues had all been there, he'd just been too distracted to see them. This could've all ended so much sooner...

Reading the detailed reports of the men it had initially attacked was painful. The ones who had talked had been meticulous in their account, describing how a giant bat creature would come scratching on the roofs of their homes, bringing with it a pungent smell; of how it would overcome them and assaulted them for hours in a row; of how it would urge them to tell what had happened under the threat of coming back and doing worse. They had even given it a name. Popobawa.

The name seemed too ridiculous for the amount of grief and pain that that thing caused.

Digging deeper, Dean confirmed what he had initially suspected: that, while some believed it to be a shapeshifter, the majority stood behind the notion that the first of this things was actually a Djinn. Summoned and trapped by a Sheikh seeking revenge on his enemies, centuries ago. When the Djinn eventually regained his freedom, it was already too late and the damage was done. It had stopped being a creature out of the stories in Scheherazade's 'A thousand and one nights' to become this thing of nightmares, the Popobawa.

The important thing for Dean, however, was the beast's origins. If it had started as a Djinn... Dean could kill it as a Djinn.

/(O|O)\\

If a green elephant had happened to walk down the street as Dean made his way from the library back to his car, Dean wouldn't have noticed.

His mind was racing a mile an hour, going over what he had learned, trying to figure out a way of killing that thing without actually telling Sam what it was or how Dean had reached his conclusions.

He'd often come up with his best plans while driving. It something that Dean felt he'd been doing for almost as long as he could walk, something that came as second nature, on occasion with little thought involved. Still, this time his mind was nothing but a blank page where a single thought was typed: kill it.

He wasn't paying attention to much else.

So, when Dean started the reverse maneuver to get the Impala back on the main road, the glance he threw towards the back of the car was more out of habit than necessity. There were no other cars in that alley; there was no way there could be anything back there. But if there were, they wouldn't have registered in his mind.

What did register was something more primal, some deeply seeded instinct of protection towards those who can't protect themselves.

The four foot high blond haired head that he caught at the corner of his eye, disappearing behind the rear end of the Impala, froze Dean's blood inside his veins. "Shit!" he yelped, hitting the brakes with both feet.

Dean's heart was hammering against his chest as he exited the car and went to the back. In his mind he was already imagining the damage that a car that size would do to a kid that small. Dean looked around. Kid that young, there should be parents around, right?

But the alley was as empty as it was silent. The kid wasn't even whimpering and Dean was sure that he'd hit him.

Silence was not good. Silence was blood and broken bones; silence was a body no longer breathing.

The instant relief of looking down and seeing nothing but the black, shiny, rear end bumper of the Impala was quickly overcome by confusion. He was sure he'd seen the kid; he could even remember that he had big, light colored eyes and pale skin.

Dean looked around the alley, fearing that the impact might've sent the kid flying backwards. Nothing.

He knelt down, looking under the Impala. Nothing.

There was no sign of a small kid being there. There was no sign that he'd ever been. And yet Dean had seen him very clearly, bobbling blond hair and a yellow shirt. He had a yellow shirt and a pair of red jeans.

Dean looked at his watch again. He was already running late. And despite the fact that he felt like he was losing his mind, Dean was not in the mood to have Sam all pissy at him because he was late.

/(O|O)\\

Sam was already pacing the street outside the county offices when Dean made a turn on to the right street.

"Where the hell have you been?" Sam exploded as soon as Dean rolled to a stop at the curb next to him. "And pick up your damn phone when I call, I was worried sick!"

Dean palmed his pockets. He had no idea where his phone was. He couldn't even remember if he'd grabbed it that afternoon when they'd checked out of the motel. "Didn't hear it, I guess," Dean offered lamely, making a mental note to replace it soon.

It was just a cell phone, Dean knew that, but it was one more thing that he'd let escape his control lately. Lost time, lost phone, lost control over his own body. None of it sat well with the older Winchester.

"Got what you were looking for?" Dean asked as soon as Sam was settled in the passenger seat of the Impala.

Sam waved a bundle of printed papers in his hand, as if the action would shake lose the information he'd been gathering the whole afternoon. "I know what we're hunting for," he answered, a victorious smile replacing the frown of worry he'd been wearing before. "And I know how to kill it."

"You do?" Dean asked, flicking on the turn signal and looking outside for incoming traffic. He was glad there was an old Volvo making its way in their lane to keep Dean looking in that direction; it was the only way he could hide from Sam's view the cold sweat that had broken out all over his face at Sam's announcement.

Was it possible that County records had some of the previous victims' statements with them? Could they contain any details that pointed Sam in the Popobawa's direction? Did Sam suspect anything? Had he found out what had happened to Dean?

"Care to share with the rest of the class?"

"A Succubus," Sam announced, his attention back on his papers and failing to see the relieved look on his brother's face. "And in between the exorcisms in dad's journal, the one that you used the before and a couple extra ones I found, we can put an end to this creep tonight."

/(O|O)\\

"_If you're going to hunt with someone else, make sure that they are as prepared for everything as you are. Going with a partner that's not on the same page as you will get you both killed."_

John's usual speech might as well have been whispered into Dean's ear, so close and so clearly he could hear it. He wasn't paying attention to his father's words now.

Dean knew he should tell Sam that the salt he was busy laying all around every hut and tent wouldn't do any good; he should warn Sam that there was no point in memorizing three different exorcisms because none of them would do a thing for what was coming to them that night; he should definitely make sure that Sam was armed with something more than a flask of holy water that would do nothing to the Popobawa other than get it wet.

Dean handed his brother the gun loaded with silver rounds, telling him it was salt. It felt bad to deceive Sam like that, but the mere thought of telling his brother what this thing was and how exactly Dean had come to have the extra intel that had allowed him to reach that conclusion... it was a conversation that Dean had actually tried to start on their drive to the Cahuillas' camp. He had ended up having to park the car on the side of the road and run out, before he puked all over the upholstery.

He wasn't about to try that again.

With some help from the Chief, they had managed to talk with all of the young men in the camp that had been attacked. Dean tried to act casual and professional, but he couldn't help but look into those kids' eyes and wonder if he looked as broken as they did; to look into their flat midriffs and wonder if that blob of killing flesh was growing inside of them as well.

Dean hoped that killing the Popobawa would be enough to make it go away, to erase whatever sickness that thing had infected them with. Had infected him with.

They would have to check that after, somehow.

Dean couldn't really think that far ahead yet. First, they needed to find out where the thing would strike next and kill it before it could hurt anyone else.

Finding where it would be was becoming easier with each interview, as Sam systematically managed to make kid after kid open up and confess that the nature of the monster's attack had been sexual. Dean couldn't help but be impressed at the way Sam could make those kids feel safe enough to tell a perfect stranger how that _thing_ had hurt them.

On one hand, it was good. As soon as the young men told someone what had happened to them, they were safe from a second attack. Like the Bloody Mary who killed anyone with a bloody secret in their past, this bat beast also had a thing for only repeating its attacks on those too afraid or embarrassed to tell what had happened to them.

On the other hand... with the elimination of each of the Popobawa's potential next victim, it became clearer and clearer that Dean was the only one left. The only one who had yet to break his silence. There was no way that thing wouldn't be coming for him next.

But in the same way as he couldn't just tell Sam to stop memorizing every exorcism that he could because none would do him any good, Dean couldn't tell him either that it was pointless to round up all the young men and keep them in the same place so they'd be safe.

"Hey, you sure you're okay to do this?" Sam's voice cut through Dean's wandering thoughts.

Dean nodded, his gaze meeting Sam's for a fleeting moment before refocusing on the sleeping forms that they were guarding.

Sam and the Chief had figured that this was the safest course of action given that they couldn't guess who the monster would be attacking next, the only way to keep every man on the tribe safe under the same roof and be sure to catch the monster at work. Dean had kept his silence, nodding on occasion to ensure them that he agreed with their plan.

It was pointless as far as their safety was concerned, but it would keep them out of Dean's way.

The women had been instructed to sleep in another tent, but every one knew none of them would be closing their eyes that night. Every single one of their loved ones was inside that tepee with Sam and Dean and it had taken a lot of persuasion on Ahtuapu's part to convince them to stay away.

Dean had tried to send Sam away too, offering some lame excuse that the women would be unprotected, but that argument had no chance of ever working. Even if Sam had the monster wrong, he had the creature' modus operandi right. This thing would only come after men.

"I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like," Sam spoke again, the soft tones barely audible over the sound of twenty men trying to keep quiet and pretending to sleep.

"Imagine what?" Dean asked distractedly.

"You know," Sam said with pained breath, "being raped."

Dean's heart jumped inside his chest, beating wildly in a staccato pace that begged Sam to shut up.

"I mean, it's gotta be hard enough when it's another human being doing it, to have control over your own body be taken away from you like that, to not be able to stop something that horrifying from happening..." Sam shook his head, clearly empathizing. "Add to that the fact that it's a supernatural being doing it, one that few have even heard of and therefore no one can ever possibly understand what you've been through?" Eyes heavy with compassion for the men inside that tent, Sam went on, "It must be nearly impossible to deal with."

Dean swallowed, amazed at the amount of bile that had gathered inside his mouth in between one failed breath and the next. The pity in Sam's voice... just imagining that sympathetic tone and those understanding eyes looking at him, seeing him as a victim... Dean would die before he'd allow that to happen.

"Yeah," Dean whispered not because of the need for stealth but because he couldn't find the strength to power his voice, the sound too hoarse from emotion, "must be a real shitty situation."

Sam turned to face his brother, his expression curious and strange, as if he could guess what was going on inside Dean's head. Before he could put his questions into words, they could both feel the hairs at the back of their necks standing at attention.

Two seconds later they could hear it. The sound of talons, scrapping against the canvas covering of the teepee.

"This is it," Sam called out, the grip on the flask of holy water in his hand growing tighter.

Cold sweat broke out on Dean's skin. Sam was right, this was it. Dean's last chance to come clean and tell Sam what they were really hunting, to make sure that his brother wouldn't be fighting an enemy of which he knew nothing about. Or to get him away from Dean. Safe.

"Head outside and flank it," Dean whispered, his hands moving fast in the darkness. "I'll stay here. We'll catch it in between."

It wasn't the plan they had agreed to, but it was one that they'd used often enough, one that Dean was sure Sam wouldn't raise any objections to.

Sam nodded, moving quiet as a shadow. "Be careful," he whispered before slipping outside.

Dean watched his brother go and quickly grabbed the jar of lamb's blood from his pocket and the knife he had hidden in the lining of his right boot. His hand shook on the handle of the knife, blood dripping quietly from the sharp tip. He could do this, Dean reminded himself. He had been doing this his whole life.

The scratching coming from above had ceased as soon as Sam had stepped outside. Dean prayed that he hadn't gotten his facts wrong and that the Popobawa wouldn't go after Sam instead of coming for him.

Dean's whole plan counted on the thing coming after him and him alone. He counted to ten and slipped outside, making his way to one of the empty tents.

There was absolutely no light inside the canvas structure but Dean couldn't risk attracting anyone's attention by turning his flashlight on. Either way, he didn't need to see the monster. Dean knew it was there already, waiting for him. He could _feel_ it.

"I'm here, you son of a bitch," Dean called out with more confidence than he felt. "Why don't you come and say hello?"

The puff of air against the back of Dean's neck was impossible to mistake for anything else.

*_You did not tell.*_

The heated stench of the Popobawa sent a chill down Dean's spine, but he didn't hesitate, spinning around. It was the fastest he'd moved in his entire life and still it wasn't fast enough.

The room was too dark to see little more than different shades of shadows, but Dean could feel the instant when the Popobawa grabbed his right hand, the one holding the blade dipped in lamb's blood, and snapped Dean's wrist back, effectively breaking bone and any hope of holding onto the knife. The sound of the knife hitting the carpet-cushioned ground should've been as loud as thunder for all that it meant.

Dean sucked in a pained breath, telling himself that the tears leaking from his eyes were due to his broken wrist and not the fact that he was, once again, at the mercy of that monster.

*_You did not tell him.*_

The voice sounded inside Dean's head like a crushing wave. Dean fought to keep his train of thought and plans, reaching with his left hand behind his back to get to the gun he'd loaded with silver rounds. The silver might've not kill a mutant Djinn, but Dean was sure it would at least slow it down.

The Popobawa, however, gave Dean no chance to even touch the hot metal of the weapon pressed against the small of his back. Instead, with a powerful shove that sent Dean ten feet across the room, the bat-beast effectively stopped Dean from doing anything else but whimper in pain as he landed on his broken bones. "Sonofabitch."

Dean lay there, panting on the rug-covered floor. He knew what would happen next and the panic of being helpless to stop it once again was making his heart thunder inside his chest, throbbing in tandem with his wrist.

The thing moved without a sound, one second ten feet away, the next materializing on top of Dean's back, it's weight pushing him against the unforgiving floor, making it impossible to breath.

Dean didn't want to breath. The same smell that had made him sick to his stomach all the other times was now worse than even. He could feel it in his mouth even without breathing.

All of the previous experiences morphed into the same one. He was in the desert and he was in the motel bed; he was dressed and naked; he was awake and asleep. His body hummed with terrorized anxiety, fearing the unknown, knowing exactly what it would feel like to have his insides crushed and stretched in the same painful motion.

"Hey!"

At first, Dean was sure that he had imagined it. But Sam's voice had never been a part of the previous assaults. Nor did the gunshot that follow.

The weight of the Popobawa was suddenly gone and Dean took a large gulp of air, the fresh oxygen cleaning his mind somewhat. Sam was standing by the entrance to the tent, gun double-palmed, still pointed at the creature. Eyes full of confusion, he looked between Dean and the giant bat that he'd just shot.

The pause that followed was less than a second, but it felt eternal to both brothers. Dean ensuring himself that Sam was actually there; Sam making the switch inside his head from normal type of Succubus to... some form he had never seen before.

Sam recovered first.

Changing the gun for his flask of holy water, Sam took a step nearer to the beast, Latin already rolling off his lips like it was his first language.

Rather than wait for the moment when Sam would realize that the Latin was useless for banishing a monster that was definitely not a demon or had any sort of demonic affiliations, Dean moved into action.

Despite his broken wrist, Dean rolled away from the spot when the Popobawa had pressed him down, and in the same fluid movement, grabbed the knife that had been knocked away from his grip and rose, prepared to strike.

The Popobawa chose that exact moment to charge as well. Quickly shaking off the surprise of having been shot, the monster roared angrily as it leaped in Sam's direction.

Everything after that seemed to have been filtered through a slow motion veil. Sam's surprise at the fact that the exorcism wasn't working on the 'Succubus' either; the feral intensity of the Popobawa's charge, claws drawing out and catching the reflection of the flashlight in Sam's hand like long, sharp knifes; Dean's desperate race to reach the mutant Djinn before it reached Sam.

When the blood covered knife sunk to the hilt in the bat's fur, Dean felt like a pressure valve had been unscrewed inside his chest. Like molten lava that had been confined inside a plastic jar for too long had finally melt away through its walls and was free.

Anger and frustration boiled and he found he couldn't stop at just that first stab to the heart. The vengeful sensation of warm blood coating his fingers didn't even registered in Dean's awareness, lost as it was in the acrid after-taste of warm monster-semen that still lingered inside Dean's mouth.

Dean had to bite his own lip to stop himself from laughing when the dying monster gave out a pathetic little whimper, more of a rush of air from his pierced lungs than a constructed sound. It was the sweetest thing that Dean had ever heard and that realization scared him more than the prospect of failing at killing that thing.

"I think its dead enough, Dean," Sam's voice cut through the sound of metal pounding flesh. Throwing Dean an odd look as the older Winchester paused with his arm raised midair, blade dripping blood, Sam took a closer gander at the bleeding monster on the floor.

Dean nodded and swallowed back the bile that had gathered inside his mouth. The pain filtered through the adrenaline rush and he clutched his throbbing, broken wrist to his chest. There was something sliding down the side of his face and Dean swipe it away with such disgust that he almost cut himself with the knife still in his left hand.

"You okay?" Sam asked, his voice sounded tentative. Uncertain. Weary.

Surely Sam had seen the Popobawa on top of him. Had seen Dean kill it with a knife, something that would never have worked on a sex demon, or any kind of demon. Sam was a smart guy; Dean knew it was just a matter of time before his brother put everything together.

"Fucker broke my wrist, but yeah… I'm fine," Dean finally muttered. Out of habit, he moved to clean the dirty knife on his jeans but stopped before the blade actually touched him. Dean didn't want any more of that thing on him,, blood or otherwise. "That has got to be the ugliest Succubus that I've ever seen," he added, avoid looking at Sam's eyes to find out how far his bullshit excuse was flying.

"I don't think this thing _is_ a Succubus," Sam stated. He crouched down, pocking at the bat-monster with the tip of his gun. "Have you ever even seen anything like this before?"

It felt like a trick question. One that Dean was in too much pain and exhaustion to examine closely.

Dean forced himself to look at the thing that had changed his life forever, the monster that had altered the way Dean saw himself. It no longer looked menacing or imposing; it didn't even looked otherworldly now.

The giant mass of black fur and leathery wings looked more like a pile of burned rubber and dark foam, a parody of a stuffed animal, deflated and lifeless. "No," Dean lied with as much conviction as he could put into his words. "Ugliest sonofabitch I've ever seen, that's for sure."

Sam gave him a look, a fleeting glance that could mean a thousand things, before shrugging and getting back to his feet. "What do we do with it?"

Dean touched his uninjured hand to his belly, imagining that he could grab the disease the Popobawa had infected him with and just yank it out. "We salt and burn it," he answered. They needed to make sure that that thing was completely gone, erase all traces that it'd ever existed. And maybe, just maybe, they'd get lucky and the evilness that it had caused in life would ebb away with the smoke of its burned body.

/(O|O)\\

Sam had done most of the work, dragging the monster outside and finding a place close enough, outside of the camp's limits, to burn the thing.

Dean was almost grateful for the broken wrist that gave him the perfect excuse to avoid touching that thing ever again.

After the initial shock of seeing the monstrous thing that had been attacking the young men of the tribe and had caused so many unnecessary deaths, Ahtuapu had managed to gather a couple of volunteers to help Sam with the fire and disposal of the beast.

Morning Dew, Straw String's mother, had taken one look at Dean's swollen wrist and had declared that she would take care of him.

Dean had never been so happy to be whisked away from his brother's inquisitive eyes.

"You don't have to do this," Dean said the minute he was alone with the woman in her family's tent. "As soon as we're done here, I can stop by a free clinic and they'll take care of it."

The woman just shook her head, raven dark hair flowing gracefully around her shoulders. "I'm happy to help," she said in a quiet, sad voice. "My son would want me to."

"Your son," Dean started, taking a sharp breath when the woman tightened the wrap around his wrist. "He was one of the attacked?"

The sadness in her eyes at Dean's words was so deep that he didn't need to hear her next words to know what she was going to say.

"My son was one of the dead," she confirmed, her gestures gentle even though her voice shook.

Dean looked down, unable to hold her gaze. Her son had suffered exactly the same thing as Dean; had gone through the exact same pain and humiliation that Dean had. Had been used and left powerless under the same malevolent being as Dean had. And while Dean could now take some measure of comfort in knowing that the Popobawa was dead, he knew that this woman's son would never have that chance.

Remembering the young man he'd seen in the morgue, the way in which he had taken his own life... how angry and powerless the boy must have felt. Dean couldn't possibly imagine what it must've been like for this mother to have found her son like that.

"The—" he started, finding that his voice was barely strong enough to be heard. Dean cleared his throat and tried again. "The medical report said that... that there was something in your son's blood," he began explaining. The information about the beast's brain altering hormone and it's consequences wouldn't bring Morning Dew her son back, but Dean hoped that it would at least help her understand her son's actions. "The thing that—that attacked your son... it left something in his blood, something that made him severely depressed. On top of what—of what had been done to him... your son must've felt that he had no other choice but to take his own life."

The woman nodded, her face resolute and strong even though tears ran unchecked down her cheeks. "I know my son was a strong young man. There was never a doubt in my mind," she said with a sad but prideful smile.

Dean opened his mouth, suddenly embarrassed that his words might've sound like an excuse for the young man's actions. Before he could say anything, however, the Native American woman placed a reassuring hand on his arm, her touch warm and compassionate.

"I am grateful you have killed the evil that forced him into this..." she whispered, her hand moving from his arm to rest against Dean's face, cupping his cheek in a tender gesture that mothers seem to have perfected. Dean missed that sort of touch terribly and even though he didn't know this woman from anywhere, he found himself leaning into it, allowing her benevolent gesture to warm him in way he hadn't been able to since that day in the desert.

"You are like my son," Morning Dew said, her voice nothing but a wisp of air against Dean's skin. "Don't allow yourself to end like he did."

Dean tensed, jerking away from her touch. "What are you talking about?"

Her liquid brown eyes held his for a moment, long enough for Dean to feel naked under her gaze.

"String Straw had the same look in his eyes then as you do now," she simply said, the conviction in her voice enough to send Dean's stomach into somersaults.

"What look?"

"Of waking up one day and realizing that his whole existence was nothing but an illusion."

/(O|O)\\

"I cannot thank you enough for what you have done," Ahtuapu started, standing beside Sam as the two watched the beast burn. From the outside, it almost looked like a harmless bonfire celebration. "I can sleep at rest this night and the ones that will follow, knowing that my people is safe. Thanks to you and your brother."

Sam nodded, embarrassed. It wasn't usual for them to stick around long enough for people to thank them, or for the ones they had help to even realize what Sam and Dean had done and thank them.

The family motto of '_you do what you do and you shuddup about it'_ went farther than keeping the family trade a secret... it also meant that Winchesters were ill equipped to handle gratitude.

"It's our job," Sam offered, his gaze going back to the smelly thing still burning on the fire. '_Our job'_, however, didn't usually ended with Sam having no idea what it was that they'd just killed. Or what had killed it.

Even though Sam had never actually seen one, he knew one thing for sure... that black, furry thing was no Succubus. And what was even more odd about it was that Dean seemed to know what it was but wasn't sharing that knowledge with Sam.

Dean had never done that. Hide facts about himself, hide information about their father and their lives prior to the fire; that Sam was used to. But withholding intel on the hunts they were in? No... they both knew how dangerous that could be.

Deep down, Sam had his suspicions over what that might mean. In the deepest, darkest recesses of his mind, Sam kept on replaying the look on Dean's face when Sam had shot the thing that was attacking him. It hadn't been relief, as one would expect over the fact that Sam had stopped that monster from doing to Dean what it had been doing to the young men of the Cahuilla tribe; it had been something more visceral and dark. Surprise. Fear. Shame.

"It's him, isn't it?" Ahtuapu's voice cut through Sam's thoughts. "The one you want to save from a deal... it's your brother."

Sam turned his eyes away from the fire, blinking to clear his vision from the white licks of flame that lingered. The older man was looking intensively at him, a piece of paper in his hand. Sam took it and opened. Inside, there was a set of instructions and a complicated symbol.

"Is this—" Sam couldn't help but ask. In the excitement of the hunt, he'd completely forgotten about his agreement with the older man, about learning of a way to stop Dean's deal. It seemed anticlimactic that the solution to the problem that had been stealing his sleep for the past months could fit in such a small piece of paper. "Will this work?"

"It is an ancient ritual that my ancestors used before going into battle. Chosen warriors would wear this and were said to be untouchable. Neither man, nor beast from above or below could mar their skin," Ahtuapu said, not a single note of doubt in his tone. "This will work."

Sam carefully folded the piece of paper and placed inside his pocket. "Thank you," he said, trying to encompass in those two short words all the emotions and gratitude that he was feeling in that moment. "This is..."

"The least I could do after what you and your brother did for us," the Chief finished for him. "One thing though," he warned before Sam could move away. At the other end of the camp, they could see Dean exiting Morning Dew's tent in a rather hurried way and walking towards them.

"Yes?" Sam said, spit drying to dust inside his mouth. The last thing that the almost-hope that had surged inside his chest wanted to hear was a 'but' in this trade.

"Once you do the ritual, you must be aware that no –_no one_- will be able to cut, pierce or affect your brother's skin in any form."

Sam's eyebrows gathered above his nose. How was that a bad thing? "I don't follow."

"When the thing that made the deal with your brother comes to collect, it won't be able to touch him or harm him in any way, but it goes the same for other things. No tattoos, no piercings... if he gets as much as a simple appendicitis, no doctor will be able to cut into him either."

Sam's breath caught in his lungs. It was a huge decision to make, but one that he would have to make for Dean without consulting him, because if he was to even approach such discussion with his brother, Sam would drop dead immediately.

"Okay," Sam whispered, meeting the older man's eyes to let him know that Sam understood how important and final that decision was.

"You ready to go?" Dean asked as soon as he reached them. He threw one look at the monster's remains, little more than a pile of ash now, before fixing his eyes on Sam. He looked jittery, ready to move on, anxious to leave that place.

Sam figured that the hand, swaddled in wrappings and hanging from Dean's neck might have something to do with that. "Yeah, we're done here," Sam agreed, ready to get his brother into the car and drive directly to the nearest clinic where they could x-ray that wrist. It was Dean's right hand, and Sam was taking no chances with it.

Ahtuapu shook Dean's other hand, his touch lingering a moment longer than it would be normal and expected of the gesture. In the older man's face ran a series of emotions that seemed odd to Sam. Understanding, for one. And compassion.

"I see Morning Dew has spoken to you," the Chief said, finally releasing Dean's hand.

Dean actually took a step back and threw a look towards the tent he'd just vacated. He cleared his throat before looking squarely at the man. "Yeah... she's a... I'm very sorry for her loss."

"As we all are," Ahtuapu agreed. "But now we can start making plans for tomorrow."

Dean cleared his throat again, his gaze flickering to Sam before returning to the Native American man. "There were some... findings in the autopsy of Morning Dew's son," Dean started, seeming unsure on how to word what he was about to say. "It would be best if the remaining kids who were... attacked... it's best that they're checked out by a doc, okay?"

Ahtuapu nodded, restraining from asking all the questions that Sam wanted to ask himself.

Dean nodded back, a sort of silent agreement settled between the two of them, before he turned his back and walked to the Impala.

Sitting on the passenger seat of his own car, Dean didn't open his mouth until Sam turned on the blinkers and parked in front of the first opened clinic he could find.

TBC... soon, I hope :)

* * *

AN: As always, my biggest thank you to Jackfan2, for her tireless beta-work in this story, also know as 'the one that never ends'. All remaining mistakes are mine.


	8. Chapter 7

_What has happened so far:_

_With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper._

_Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities._

_Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare._

_Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels._

_The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests._

_When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins._

_In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal._

_Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California._

_Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body._

_The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp._

_Dean finally figures out what the monster is: a mutate Djinn, bent on sodomizing young men until they tell everyone what has been done to them. The African tribe that had first encountered such a thing had called it a Popobawa._

_At the camp, Dean acts as bait to kill the Popobawa and lets Sam believe that they are hunting a Succubus._

_The monster, stronger than him, breaks Dean's right wrist and is about to attack him once again when Sam, who had been sent on a wild goose chase by his brother, finds the two and distracts the Popobawa long enough for Dean to kill it._

_Chief Ahtuapu thanks the Winchesters for their help and gives Sam, as he had promised, the means necessary to break Dean's deal. A powerful spell that will protect Dean from any kind of action that would cause him harm. After it is done, no man, beast or supernatural being can ever break Dean's skin._

_This is what happens next..._

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\SEVEN

"What are we doing here?" Dean voiced as soon as he took in the parked ambulances and the patients traffic in and out of the blue building where they'd parked. Even that early in the day, there was a steady crowd of people surrounding the entrance of the place.

Sam gave him a pointed look for asking what was, apparently, the obvious. "That thing broke your wrist. _We're _here to have it checked out," he said, talking slowly and as sarcastically as he could.

"I'm fine," Dean said. It came out too fast, too soon. It sounded more like a conditioned response than an actual argument to Sam's reasons.

Sam could see right through Dean's bullshit. He was pale and sweaty and his eyes seemed to have a very hard time focusing. Unless the Native American woman at the camp had supplied Dean with some very illicit dose of peyote, there was something worse than a broken wrist going on with Dean. Point of the matter was, he was far from fine.

"Are we gonna stay parked here all day?" Dean cut in, trying to look bored but being betrayed by the obvious pinched look of pain on his face.

"The car is," Sam said, opening his door and taking the car keys with him. "We'll be inside, having a someone look at your wrist."

Dean opened his mouth to renew his protests, but Sam didn't gave him time to say anything. "It's just an x-ray Dean... unless you have something to hide, it's pretty harmless."

It was meant as a innocent jib, but Sam was curious to see how Dean would react. Deep down, Sam was still looking for reasons to tell himself that he was imagining things, that Dean was, in fact, alright.

However, Dean's blank look and submission were not good signs. And even though he hadn't said a word as he got out of the car and made his way to the admissions' stand, to Sam it was the same as screaming out loud 'YES! I AM HIDING SOMETHING! AND IT'S BAD!

Dean was fairly quiet during the whole process of filling out the forms and waiting for his name to be called to radiology.

Sam kept giving him sideways glances, hoping to figure out what was wrong but, at the same time, not wanting to intrude too much. Whatever was going on with his brother, Sam currently had other priorities.

The piece of paper that Ahtuapu had given him was burning a hole in Sam's pocket. He hadn't had a chance to look too closely at it before Dean had joined them, but from what he had seen, Sam knew that the spell would require Dean's blood. How the hell was he going to perform a ritual like that without Dean being aware of it?

When Dean's name was finally called and his brother gingerly walked away, feet dragging on the floor like a petulant child, Sam finally had his chance. The list of things that he would need to acquire wouldn't be that hard to get. With some luck, he could probably get it all together in a day or so.

Most of the stuff that he was going to need, Sam was pretty sure he could find at Bobby's. A piece of oak tree, a pair of fresh fish' eyes, some iron, poppy seeds and, yeah... there it was, blood of the person who the spell was supposed to protect.

He would have to drug Dean. That was the only solution that Sam could see at the moment. Telling Dean anything about this was out of the question until the ritual was complete and Sam could make sure that the protection actually worked; and there weren't that many excuses that he could come up with to justify asking Dean for a spoon-full of blood.

Plus, there was the sigil. According to Ahtuapu's instructions, it had to be drawn once in the chest and once in the back of the warrior meant to be protected. Even though the instructions said that the sigil could not be seen by the naked eye, there was still the small matter of actually drawing it on Dean's body without him realizing it.

Sam hated the idea of tricking and taking advantage of his own brother like that, but there was no other way to save him from Hell. He was sure Dean would understand. Eventually.

Maybe the doctor here would prescribe Dean with some meds that Sam could use. From what he remembered, two beers and a Percocet used to pretty much guarantee that Dean didn't have a coherent thought for at least 24 hours.

It got boring fast in that waiting room. Sam had tried pacing for a while, but that got old quickly. Eventually, he was forced to sit on one of the butt-ugly, orange colored plastic chairs that composed all of the waiting room's décor. It was too small and too stiff to allow for anyone to be comfortable for any more than two minutes, but none of the sniffling red noses, or even the pair of guys sitting in one corner with what looked like some broken bones, seemed to be complaining about it. The only one voicing his complaints was the one kid who had tried to shove a space shuttle up his nose. A miniature, at least.

The kid didn't look one bit disturbed by the fact that he had a couple of jet engines sticking out of his left nostril - Sam supposed he didn't have to, the kid's mother looked plenty disturbed for both of them - but he kept on declaring for all to hear just how bored he was.

"Brian, sit still," the exasperate mother told him for the fifth time in a row. "You'll make it worse, honey."

"If I behaff really, really good," the kid lisped, hand dropping from his nose in a blatant blackmail tactic. "Yo'll tamme to thee ta movie, mommy?"

"Which one do you want to see, Brian?"

"Batman! I wanna thee Batman, mommy!"

Sam snorted, finally figuring why the kid had reminded him of his brother. The two of them shared the same mental age and the same love for Bat—

Whatever the mother's response to that was, Sam was no longer paying attention. His heart had just plunged from the middle of his chest to some bottomless and cold pit as the kid's enthusiastic screams of 'Batman! Batman! Batman!' finally connected the dots that Sam had been reluctant to connect.

He knew the reason why Dean had been able to kill something that they had never encountered before; _Dean_ had seen it before.

Two days ago.

Dean had been drunk and still recovering from heat stroke but Sam clearly remembered him mentioning a bat-man. At the time, Sam had assumed Dean was referring to _the_ Batman, given that his brother was a fan after all. But now that Sam had seen the thing they had been hunting... now Sam understood that Dean, in his drunkenness, was being more literal than fanboy-ish.

A bat-man. Literally a man with bat wings and facial features. Exactly like the thing that they had just killed.

The thing that Sam thought to be a Succubus but was impervious to holy water and exorcisms; the thing that Dean had killed with a _knife_.

Throwing a look around to make sure that Dean was still somewhere in the bowels of the clinic, Sam pulled his laptop from his bag. Crossing his fingers that the place came with free Internet service, Sam powered up his search engine. The connection established on its own almost immediately.

On a hunch, he pulled up the browser's history. Sam remembered falling asleep and waking up to Dean working on that same computer. Maybe his brother had stumbled on some obscure reference and had used it as a last resource. A hail!Mary that had saved their lives like so many times before.

The browser's history page stared blankly at Sam; not even one entry had been left undeleted.

The fact that Dean had gone to the trouble of doing something like that, given that the guy usually didn't even bother closing the laptop when he was shamelessly looking at porn, raised Sam's suspicions.

Sam opened up one of his usual research sites, a place where both hunters and amateurs shared lore and experiences, and did a word search using 'bat-form' and 'sexual assault' as his key words.

The name of the monster that he had salted and burned earlier that day appeared in Sam's screen with a disturbing swiftness.

Popobawa, a monster with African roots, that literally meant bat-wings in Swahili.

From there, Sam had no difficulty in reaching the Popobawa's connections with Djinns and figuring out how they could be killed. How Dean had killed it.

That hadn't been just some iron knife or a consecrated blade that Dean had used, as Sam had first suspected. That had been a knife dipped in lamb's blood, the only thing that could put a stop to a Djinn and any of its distant cousins.

Sam was glad he was sitting as the full implications of what he had just figured out hit him. Suddenly every single conversation, every single expression on Dean's face was taking on a whole different meaning. Dean knew exactly what he was dealing with and had gone in prepared because he _knew_ what they'd been hunting... and hadn't said a thing to Sam.

It all made some sort of sickening sense now.

The spooked look in Dean's eyes; his reluctance to sleep; the drinking... God! the stench in their motel room... even that much Sam could now recognize as being the same thing he had smelled near the monster!

Dean had been in the presence of that thing before and had made a secret out of it, which meant that... that thing had...

Sam raced to the nearest bathroom, barely making it to the first stall before his stomach rebelled on him.

Sam couldn't even form the words inside his head. After all they had been through, after all the danger that they had faced throughout their lives, after all the things that could cause them harm, Sam had never even considered that Dean -strong, self-confident, cocky Dean- would ever be forced to deal with something so dark and terrible as this.

Sam opened the cold-water faucet, watching the running water without really knowing what he was supposed to do with it. In his mind, all he could see was his brother; listening to Dean's drunken rants about evil bats; running into Dean, innocently pouring toothpaste into his mouth and dismissing the fact as one of Dean's quirks. Now, Sam couldn't help but shudder, imagining what sort of dirt his brother was trying to wash away from his mouth, from inside himself.

"Sam Talbert?"

Sam turned around, barely registering that the man was calling out the alias he'd supplied at check-in. He couldn't, for the life of him, understand why there was a man wearing blue pajamas in the middle of the bathroom.

And then he remembered. The clinic. They were at the clinic because the monster that had _raped_ Dean, had also broken his wrist.

Sam blinked at the man, noticing the nametag that identified him as Nurse Benton.

"Mr. Talbert," Benton insisted, his voice growing softer, trying to bring Sam out of his head. "Your brother has been taken care of. You're good to take him home."

It came out sounding more like a question than a statement. Sam wondered what he must've looked like for the man to be addressing him like _he_ was the victim and not Dean.

God...

"Is he..." Sam began, not sure how to phrase what he really wanted to ask. They were at a clinic, with doctors in the close vicinity of Dean and this was the perfect –the only- chance that Sam might have to get Dean some medical attention. But how could he flat out tell these people, these strangers, to check Dean for any rape-related injury? What if he was seeing more to this than it really was, what if he was making the wrong assumptions? Could he really expose his brother to something like that based on nothing but a gut-wrenching guess?

Sam knew the answer to all of those questions all too well. He was right or he was wrong about what had really happened to Dean, but either way, Dean would never forgive him if Sam betrayed him like that. "Is everything okay with him?" Sam finished lamely.

The nurse gave him a long look, probably trying to determine if Sam was high on something. "Well, you can ask him that yourself," the other man started, "but yeah, other than the fractured radius, which the doctor was able to reduce and cast, he's doing okay. Anything other than that, you'll have to check with his attending physician, Dr. Margot."

Sam nodded. Of course they hadn't found anything wrong with Dean. Sam hadn't found anything _wrong_ with Dean and he had been right there, in front of Dean, in the same room, probably right after it had happened. Unless Dean actually complained about any pain or injury—

"Look... this is off the book," Benton went on, going as far as looking in the direction of the door, to make sure that they were alone. "But is there anything that you want to tell us?"

_T__hat Sam wanted to tell them?_ The question seemed almost ironic, given that Dean was the one with the possible big secret. Sam was having a very hard time containing the nervous giggle that was ready to burst free from his lips. "No," Sam managed to stutter to the suspicious nurse. "Why?"

The man twisted his mouth, probably seeing right through Sam's lie. "Look, you seem like a nice guy and clearly it wasn't your doing, but from what we saw your—" he stopped, looking at Sam for the proper term to define his relationship with Dean.

"Brother."

"The doctor doesn't think it's enough to bother calling the cops on it, but your brother," he went on, "he might be in some sort of trouble."

The urge to laugh hysterically as getting ridiculous. That guy had no idea.

"The bruising on his wrist wasn't just from the recent fracture, we all could see that. Some of it was older, yellowing marks that went all around his wrist," Benton said, his voice dropping to a conspiring whisper, "in both wrists. Like someone had restrained him, you know? Add to that the break and the way he freaked out when we asked him to take off his shirt... I think someone might be abusing your brother," the nurse went on earnestly. "Try to talk him into talking to the police. It's the best thing to do in these cases."

Sam nodded, numbly. The words 'freak out' seemed foreigner when applied to Dean. In fact, Sam couldn't recall a single time in his life when he had seen Dean 'freak out'.

And the bruises...

He was trying to remember where he'd seen bruises in Dean's body after his mishap in the desert, but Sam other than the nasty bruise he'd seen on Dean's chest, he was pretty sure that there weren't any more. He was sure that there hadn't been any on Dean's wrists. After all, Sam had spent that whole night holding Dean's wrist, trying to figure out if his brother's pulse was too fast or too slow, worrying himself sick trying to figure out if he should get Dean to a hospital or not.

What ever had caused _those_ bruises, it had happened after the desert. And Sam was pretty sure that the thing that had caused them wasn't exactly within police territory and that, if he was right, Dean had already taken care of it.

Sam's nod became a shake of the head. How could he have missed the fact that Dean had bruises on his wrists? They lived in each other's pocket the whole frigging day... how could he have missed that?

"I'll talk to him," Sam promised. The nurse didn't need to know that the topic of the conversation would be a completely different one, but one thing was true. Sam was going to talk to his brother about this. "Thank you for your help."

/(O|O)\\

Dean was conked out on pain meds. He zombie-walked to the Impala, propelled mostly by Sam's gentle guiding. He promptly fell asleep as soon as he was seated in the car and his head hit the passenger's side window.

Sam watched from the corner of his eye, looking for a clue, looking for confirmation of his suspicions. He couldn't find any. He wasn't sure he would be able to recognized it as a clue even he if saw one.

Other than the paleness of his skin and the bruises that Sam already knew about, Dean looked like any other time after a hunt gone wrong.

In the quietness of the Impala, with nothing around them but the familiar smell of leather and a stretch of road ahead, Sam wanted to convince himself that he was imagining things, that he was seeing fire where there wasn't even smoke.

Dean wasn't behaving like someone who had been through such a life-changing trauma—

Sam stopped himself. He knew next to nothing about the matter, his only information coming from daytime TV shows and late night bad movies. And those were mostly about women going through the aftermath of rape. Was it the same for men? How the hell was Sam supposed to know what to look for?

Sam had heard all those versions of the same story, the stories that those young men at the Cahuilla camp had shared with him. About how the monster would came at night, about how they were helpless to stop it, about what it did to them.

For a second, Sam tried to imagine himself in the shoes of one of those kids. Lying in the illusionary safety of his own bed, going through the initial denial of what was actually happening; then the slow realization that you're helpless to make it stop; the horror of losing control over your own body and have that power brutally transferred to a being that not only looks like a monster but also does monstrous things to you; the merciless invasion and the awareness that nothing will ever be the same—

Sam's breath caught in his chest and he clutched his fingers around the wheel. It was too big, too colossal to even begin to imagine and Sam could only hope that he was wrong about this, because he knew he wouldn't be able to help Dean otherwise.

But he couldn't ignore the evidence either.

The fact that the monster had gone after Dean wasn't even the part that had raised Sam's suspicions. Monsters went after them all the time, like they sensed that Sam and Dean were a danger to them.

No, that part was pretty much par for the course, unfortunately.

It wasn't even the fact that Dean had known how to kill that thing even though Sam had no idea what it was or how a knife was enough to finish it. No, they had had their lucky breaks before, thinking that they were hunting one thing only to have the floor flip on them and having to improvise.

Neither of them would be much of a hunter –or a even an alive, _breathing_ one- if they weren't able to think on their feet and act fast with whatever the situations dealt them with.

No... it had been the look in Dean's eyes as he had plunged his knife over and over in that monster's flesh that had called Sam's attention. Dean had looked... unhinged.

If there was one thing that Sam had learned to respect about his brother was that he was one hell of a hunter. No matter his personal feelings about the fugly they were after or how badly he wanted to end it, Dean was always focused on the hunt and kept his head in the game.

What Sam had seen in that tent was not it. It was so far from it that Sam'd had trouble recognizing the mad man wielding that blade as his brother at all.

It hadn't been a hunt. It had been revenge.

And based on what that bat-thing had done to its victims, Sam had a pretty good idea what Dean was trying to avenge.

A car on the other lane hit them with its high beams, lights too bright that filled the front seat of the Impala with white. Dean stirred, a slit of green peeking from his barely opened eyes. Still mostly asleep, Dean raised his right hand to rub the crust out of his eyes, promptly bashing an eye in with his newly cast hand. "Shit!"

"Sucks, doesn't it?" Sam asked around a fake smile, milking his 'more-experienced one' status, on account of his own experience with a broken wrist the previous year.

Dean was eyeing the white cast that covered his arm from palm to elbow like he was considering cracking the thing open and throwing it outside the window. "Where are we going?" he asked after a while.

"Bobby's," Sam replied, the decision made in his mind just seconds before. He needed a place where Dean could feel safe and at home enough before Sam could even expose his questions about what had happened. Plus, Bobby could help him get together everything that he would need to perform the spell.

"Why?" Dean asked, suspicion in his voice.

"Can't tell you," Sam said in all honesty. It was sort of their silent agreement, a private code for whatever Sam had to do to get Dean out of his deal. Sam knew he was taking advantage of that, but it was for a good cause.

"Right," Dean muttered, leaning back against the window, arms crossed over his chest in an attempt to get his broken limb in a more comfortable position. "The cloak and dagger shit."

The answer made Sam somewhat relax. It sounded so Dean-like that Sam was sure that he was just making a storm out of a tiny bead of water.

"What do you think that thing was back there?" Sam asked.

The words hadn't been planned. The fact that they were out of his mouth was much a surprise to Sam as it was to Dean.

Sam, not daring to glance away from the road, felt Dean shift in the seat, legs suddenly too long for the small space.

"What thing?" he asked after a beat. "The smelly fugly we put down in the Indian camp?"

Sam nodded. "It wasn't a succubus," he went on, unable to stop himself. "It couldn't be. You killed it with a knife."

Dean sat up straighter in the Impala's seat, all pretense of sleeping gone. "Lucky break, I guess."

Sam swallowed. This was what he'd been afraid of. Dean was blatantly lying to his face. "So, you'd never seen something like that before?"

Dean's body was rigid by his side, eyes fixed on Sam's jaw. "What's with the twenty-questions late night show?"

Sam wanted to kick himself. He'd had no intention of doing this in the car, in the middle of the road. Why hadn't he been able to keep his mouth shut until they had reached Bobby's? On the other hand, Bobby's place had too many distractions, too many places where Dean could just disappear for whole days and avoid talking to Sam. That was a lesson he had learned the hard way after their father's death. He couldn't risk the same thing happening now. not with something like that.

Sam turned on the blinker and started to pull the car over to the shoulder of the empty road. If they were going to do this now, Sam wanted his attention on Dean, not traffic. "I know, okay Dean... I know," Sam said as soon as the car rolled to a stop. "I know that you saw that monster before last night, I know that you knew what it was before we went to hunt it and I kn—I need to know if it did anything to you."

/(O|O)\\

Dean had been tempted to ask the doctor at the clinic to have a look at his stomach. He had a morbid curiosity about finding out if that monster had managed to infect him the same way it had infected the other kids, but when Dean opened his mouth to ask for a full exam, he couldn't voice the words.

For one, Sam was waiting for him just around the corner, in the clinic's waiting room and Dean knew how easy it would be for someone to slip out the wrongs words about what was happening.

And second... just the thought of having the doctors cold, gloved hands touching any patch of skin in his body that wasn't covered in clothes made Dean's stomach turn.

It made no sense, Dean was well aware of that. It was a touch that was in no way intimate or personal, quite the opposite as a matter of fact, but the mere idea of taking off his clothes in that bright lit room and laying back while that man in a white coat touched him... Dean's skin crawled just at the idea. He was scared of what he might do.

So, no, the safest thing for him was to wait, bite down on his morbid curiosity and just get his broken wrist fixed.

Dean had come very close to losing it when the plumpy nurse had asked him to take off his shirt, even if it was just to better access his wounded wrist. Dean had started to sweat out of nowhere, his visions had gone kind of blurry and Dean was pretty sure that he might've even snarled at some point. Even if he had eventually complied, Dean was sure that the nurse and the doc had caught on Dean's odd reaction.

The looks his bruised wrists were getting weren't lost on Dean either. In a flash of discolored skin, he had gone from Mr. Talbert to 'sweetie' and 'hon', as the old matron nurse tried to make things 'easier' for him.

Dean could feel the shift in their view of him, from klutz to victim. He hated that.

Dean had truly believed that he had escaped those looks when they had left the clinic. He was wrong.

Sam's questions about what had happened had come too soon. Dean had figured he had at least until they arrived at, wherever they were going, to prepare some answers for his brother.

Apparently, the time Dean had spent doing X-rays, having his broken bones poked and prodded and having minor freak outs at the prospect of being asked to take off his clothes, Sam had been spending his time dissecting every little action and information of the past few days.

The fact that Dean was exhausted from not sleeping in the past 48 hours and riding the down slop of some very nice painkillers, didn't help.

Dean felt the car stop and his heart started racing. He couldn't do this now. He had no idea how to convince Sam that nothing had happened. This was something Dean feared, he couldn't protect Sam from.

Unconsciously, Dean pulled his shirt's sleeves down, trying to cover the dark marks that would scream LIAR as soon as Dean opened his mouth to say nothing had happened. He realized the futility of the gesture when he looked at the bulk of the plaster around his arm.

Sam was waiting, trying to look patience even if Dean could feel his agitation and concern across the leather.

"You saw what happened," Dean pointed out, hoping that his voice had the right mix of confusion and annoyance. "That freakin' smelly thing was all over m—"

Dean stopped, fearing his voice might tremble, as the words got too close to the truth. Sam was studying him, searching for every tell and every nuance in Dean's tone. He hated it when his brother did that. "What the fuck is this about anyway?"

Sam sighed, like Dean's demands for some clarity were a nuisance that he had predicted but was hopping to avoid.

"I did some research, Dean. There was no way you could've killed that thing unless you knew exactly what it was..." he paused, slouching down like Dean was some scared victim that might find Sam's size imposing and menacing. Like Dean hadn't been living with a Sasquatch is whole life. "And the only way for you to know that, based on the clues that we had, was if you had encountered it before."

Dean forced his sluggish brain to come up with a good explanation for that. There was a building anger growing inside his chest at the callous and intrusive way Sam was demanding explanations, like it was his right to know every sordid detail of Dean's life, but Dean wasn't really sure he should be offended by that.

Still, Dean felt like punching Sam for some reason, stop in actions only by some still sane part of his brain that informed Dean that punching your own brother because he asked a simple question might not come across as the product of the most stable of minds.

Dean knew his brother. He knew Sam had already reached his own conclusions, had already figured the problem out. This... this was only him looking for confirmation in order to start _fixing_ Dean.

There was only one thing that Dean could do that would get Sam off his back and stun his brother into not mentioning the matter ever again.

Dean let his casted limb fall in the space between him and the door, hidden from Sam's eyes, and dug his fingers into the leather on the car seat. The force of his fingers' grip send waves of pain up and down Dean's arm. It was a better pain to focus on.

"Jesus, Sam! Are you— do you really think that I let that thing do to me the same thing it did those kids?" Dean blurted out. The words were razor sharp and would've cut right through him if it weren't for the detached feeling that was beginning to settle through Dean's body. This wasn't him; he wasn't talking about himself. "Is that what got your panties in a twist, Samantha? You saw me gank a monster that you had never heard about so, obviously, the only possible explanation was that your brother had gotten ass-raped by a fucking bat, because there is no way that Dean knows more about hunting than Sam?" Dean stopped for breath, hearing the gasp that escaped Sam's lips. Dean forced a twisted laugh out of his own mouth, one that was more hysteria than humor. "You're a fucking idiot, Sam."

The hurt in Sam's face was so sudden and intense that Dean actually thought that his brother was going to punch him. He could see Sam's fingers, clenched into a tight fist, white, resting against the blackness of the seat. Dean almost wished that his brother would just go ahead and slugged him.

It came as a small disappointment when Sam, instead of lashing out like Dean's mockery words deserved, did the opposite and left the car with a door bang.

Dean felt all air and strength rush out of him. He was shaking so hard that he feared the whole car would vibrate with him.

He'd done it.

He had managed to piss off Sam so unbelievably that his brother could only assume that Dean was too big of an ass to have been through anything remotely traumatic in the past few days.

"Get out of the car!" Sam's words were punctuated with a bang on the hood that sounded like thunder in the otherwise quiet road.

Dean jumped in his seat. It had been a while since anyone had been able to sneak up on him like that.

The road was deserted save for the parked Impala. The hood was yellow with dust, save for the small area where Sam had slapped his hand down.

Dean looked at the end of the road. Cut in between the asphalt and the horizon, there was a form. A human form. From that distance, it looked like smoke.

"Dean... come one man," Sam tried again, the frustration of before back to a more understanding tone. "I know that you're lying to me and I understand that you might feel like you ha—"

Dean wished his brother would just make up his mind and decide if he wanted to beat Dean or hug him.

The shape moved closer, cut against the horizon and becoming more defined and clearer when the slowly moving clouds allowed for the sun to cast its rays over it.

It was a kid.

Maybe five or six. Light hair, cut short, yellow shirt and the same stupid red jeans of before. It was the same kid from the alley, Dean was sure of that.

"... know, but I can help you," Sam finished.

Dean realized that he hadn't listened to a single word that Sam had just said, but from the look his brother was giving him, Dean was sure Sam was expecting some sort of answer.

He also seemed to have absolutely no clue about the kid that was standing at the end of the road, all alone.

They had to help him. The middle of nowhere was no place for a kid that small to be on his own. The world was a dangerous place, at best; it could be downright cruel if you gave it a chance.

Dean started to move towards the kid, each step bringing more and more details to his attention. The little brown coat with a hood that he was wearing over the yellow shirt; the metallic blue of his tennis shoes, the delicate shape of his face...

"Dean!" Sam yelled out. "What? You're just gonna turn your back on me and walk away, is that it?"

Dean looked back at his brother. The hurt look was back in Sam's face. He opened his mouth to explain to Sam what he was doing, that he had no intention of leaving, that he just wanted to help the kid.

The blare of a big truck's horn cut through the silence before Dean could even utter a single word.

Dean looked back at the edge of the horizon, certain that he would be too late to warn the kid, to get him out of harms' way.

The kid was gone. Again.

He had left nothing behind but Dean's heart, pounding against his chest.

There was nothing moving in the middle of the road but the long semi-truck with a refrigerated load that drove past them with a heavy gush of air.

"I'm not letting you walk away from this," Sam let out, reminding Dean of the here and now.

Here and now, Sam was still there, still pissed. And Dean was, apparently, hallucinating little kids in the middle of nowhere. Kids that always seemed to get killed right in front of his eyes.

"What the hell crawled up your ass and died?" Dean said, turning his back on the imaginary kids and facing his brother. Yup... Sam looked pissed.

Before Dean could say anything more, Sam grabbed his uninjured wrist and spun him around, pushing Dean against the frame of the car.

"What happened in that room when I was away, Dean?" Sam asked, his voice low with anger. "What possible half-assed explanation do you have for the line of salt around your bed, for the rumpled sheets, for the frigging smell all over the place? Some really rancid chick you managed to pick up in between unconsciousness and pucking your guts out in the bathroom?"

Sam punctuated each of his questions with a push against Dean's chest, each shortening the distance between them, each making Dean's world grow smaller.

The sun peeked from above the treetops on the side of the road and hit Dean's eyes. For a second, he was blinded by the light, seeing nothing but shadows around him.

The shadows began to move, like giant wings growing to cover his entire field of vision and Dean pushed back, trying to escape the dark, frantic to escape the bubble of nothingness and pain that was trying to eat him up.

The presence above him would not move. Dean was sure that if he were to look down, he would find himself staring at the grey, furry phallus of the Popobawa. He could feel it between his legs, could feel the steady throb as it taptaptaptaped against his thigh, eager to roll him over; seeking entrance; demanding entrance.

It was everywhere at once, tapping against Dean's legs, piercing through his body, perforating his soul like a red, hot, scalding rod.

The thing's breath was on his face, robbing Dean of any hope of ever breathing fresh air. He couldn't breathe; couldn't garner the strength to push it again no matter how much he tried.

Dean thought he had killed the thing, but he was wrong. Like he had been wrong about the salt; like he had been wrong about the goblins; like he had been wrong about thinking that he could survive this.

He couldn't; Dean could feel it now. He could taste death, pouring down his throat, lips stretched impossibly wide around hot flesh that smelled of wet dog and decay. He could feel his stomach stretch until his jeans' button popped off, until his clothes torn at the seams.

He was going to blow, filled up like a balloon. Dean could feel it; he could already see his insides spread around the desert like wet chunks of beef.

He was dying. All over again.

"FUCKING BREATHE, DEAN!"

Sam's voice sounded like thunder, echoing inside Dean's ears so close it had been shouted.

The smell of death was gone, replaced by human sweat, gunpowder and motor oil. Sam and his car.

Dean blinked, the sunlight finally clearing from his eyes and allowing him to look around. He was sitting on the gravel, the larger chunks of stone digging against the his ass cheeks like needles.

Sam was kneeling in front of him, both arms around Dean's shoulders, head hanging low as he panted.

Sam sounded like he had just run a marathon, and yet Dean was the one who felt like his muscles had all turned into jelly.

"I'm sorry," Sam whispered without daring to look up. "I'm so sorry."

Dean had an insane instinct to look at the floor and figure out to which ant Sam was apologizing so profusely until Sam looked up and Dean could see the tears whelming in his brother's eyes.

"I'm so sorry, Dean," he whispered his newfound mantra. "I didn't—I didn't know..."

The notion that Sam had just witnessed his whole freak out finally sunk in Dean's mind. He saw, more than felt or commanded, his hand reaching up, landing on Sam's shaking shoulder.

Dean wanted nothing more than to pretend that the past few minutes had never happened; in fact, he wanted that whole week to have never happened. But right then, he wanted that look out of Sam's face.

It hurt to see his pain reflected back in Sam's eyes; somehow, it made the whole thing more impossible to bear than it already was.

"I'm really tired, Sam," Dean managed to say, his voice raspy and broken like he had just screamed himself hoarse in the silence of his head. "Can we go now?"

The rest of the trip to Bobby's place was a well-rehearsed escape plan for them both; Sam pretended to believe that Dean was really asleep on the passenger seat; Dean pretended that the tears rolling down his brother's face weren't really for him.

AN: As always, my deepest thank you to Jackfan2 for the beta work. Any remaining mistakes are mine :)


	9. Chapter 8

_What has happened so far:_

_With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper._

_Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities._

_Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare._

_Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels. _

_The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests._

_When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins._

_In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal._

_Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California._

_Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body._

_The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp._

_Dean finally figures out what the monster is: a mutate Djinn, bent on sodomizing young men until they tell everyone what has been done to them. The African tribe that had first encountered such a thing had called it a Popobawa._

_At the camp, Dean acts as bait to kill the Popobawa and lets Sam believe that they are hunting a Succubus._

_The monster, stronger than him, breaks Dean's right wrist and is about to attack him once again when Sam, who had been sent on a wild goose chase by his brother, finds the two and distracts the Popobawa long enough for Dean to kill it._

_Chief Ahtuapu thanks the Winchesters for their help and gives Sam, as he had promised, the means necessary to break Dean's deal. A powerful spell that will protect Dean from any kind of action that would cause him harm. After it is done, no man, beast or supernatural being can ever break Dean's skin._

_Sam drives Dean to a clinic and forces him to have his wrist checked. While waiting on Dean, Sam remembers Dean's previous comments about an evil 'bat-man' when he was drunk and realizes that the monster that they'd just killed couldn't possibly be a succubus as Dean let him believe. Instead of holy-water and a exorcism, Dean had killed the monster with just a knife._

_Sam figures that Dean knows more than he's letting on and that the only way for him to have that extra knowledge is if Dean himself had been a victim of thing that had been attacking young men at the Indian camp._

_On their way to Bobby's, Sam confronts Dean about his doubts and sends Dean into a brutal flashback that almost kills Dean._

_This is what happens next..._

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\EIGHT

Sam's heart was racing like a horse on the final lap of the Kentucky Derby.

He had known that Dean was lying. But his brother's reasoning had actually made sense and, for a second there, Sam had even been tempted to believe Dean.

After all, there was no denying the fact that there was a four year gap in their lives, a hole in Sam's knowledge during which he had little to no idea of what Dean had done. The one thing Sam did know for sure about that time was that he had almost became a respectable lawyer and married the woman of his life while Dean had remained hunting, both with their father and alone.

It was _probable_ that Dean could've stumbled into something similar to the Popobawa during that time; but that only explained _why_ Dean knew how to kill it. Not how he'd known what _it_ was.

Sam hadn't even considered the fact that Dean might've faced one of these things before; Dean was right about that too. In all honesty, Sam didn't really liked to think about all those hunts where he hadn't been there to watch out his brother's back. Too many hunts where no one had been there to watch Dean's back at all.

But the fact remained that none of those reasons explained the bruises on Dean's body; or the spooked look that would take over his face whenever Dean thought no one was paying attention; or the exhaustion in his eyes that had gotten that much worse in the span of a couple of days. And nothing, not one thing that Dean could possibly say, would ever explain what Sam had seen in his eyes when Dean had killed that monster

Sam banged the door of the Impala in anger, mainly to stop himself from doing the same to his brother, which he would if he was forced to stay a single second more inside the car.

Sam's actions from that point on hadn't been planned; it was just about as much excuse as Sam could find for himself in insight. He just knew that he needed some answers and that politely asking Dean was getting him nowhere. After that, he'd lost it and yanked Dean out of the car because the compulsion to beat the answer out of his brother was still there and forcefully removing Dean from his Impala-cocoon was neither here nor there, but it was a step towards moving.

Getting Dean out of the car hadn't done much; in fact, the minute he was out, Dean seemed to be ignoring Sam altogether and that… that was something that Sam would not allow his brother. Not right then.

Not about something so serious. Dean could be hurt, he could be in need of going back to that hospital and the only way Sam would ever find out about was when his brother finally collapsed on the floor. Sam refused that as his only option in this mess. There were important questions that Sam needed answered right away and Dean's pig-headedness wasn't making it easier for either of them.

"What happened in that room when I was away, Dean?" Sam asked, his voice low with barely contained frustration at being deprived of the truth. "What possible half-assed explanation do you have for the line of salt around your bed, for the rumpled sheets, for the frigging smell all over the place? Some really rancid chick you managed to pick up in between unconsciousness and puking your guts out in the bathroom?"

Each question brought him closer and closer to Dean. Sometimes, crowding his brother was the only to get some answers out of Dean, and Sam knew that too well. It was a method far too tested and tried by both Sam and John in the past, and even though Sam wasn't proud of it, the fact that it worked.

It worked because anyone who truly knew Dean, knew how peculiar he was about personal space. Despite his usual brassiness and horny ways, there weren't many people that Dean allowed too close to him.

If Sam was wrong about his suspicions about what had happened and Dean was actually telling the truth, then the worst thing that his next actions could cause was Dean giving him a black-eye for manhandling him against the Impala. But if Sam had been right and Dean was lying...

... whatever Sam had expected to happen, Dean's reaction was one that Sam could have never accounted for.

The sun had hit Dean's eyes in the exact moment that his back slammed against the hood of the car and everything had gone straight to hell from there.

Dean's breath itched inside his chest and his whole body tensed against Sam. Sam pulled back, but it was already too late.

Arms extended by his side and palms opened, trying to look as harmless and un-imposing as he could manage, Sam had taken one step back and watched with growing panic as Dean went from withdraw and distracted to... somewhere else.

Dean wasn't even seeing Sam anymore. His eyes were opened wide, whites too bright, green unfocused and feverish; his nostrils were flaring, panting breaths that were too shallow to be actually pumping any amount of air inside his lungs.

"Dean," Sam tried, keeping his distance and his voice steady, hoping that a familiar sound would help reverse whatever the hell Sam had triggered. "Dean, come on man, it's just me. Breathe."

Dean's paleness was quickly turning into a sickly grey that made Sam's sweat turn cold. They were literally in the middle of nowhere and, if Sam needed to rush Dean somewhere for help, he couldn't even guess where the next hospital or clinic was, except for the one that they'd left hours ago.

Sam's heart skipped a beat when Dean's legs folded and he started to sink to the ground, back sliding against the Impala like it was a slow-motion rollercoaster at the fair and pulling his shirts up as it went along.

As he crunched down next to his brother to support his falling body, Sam realized that the movement hadn't so much been a matter of Dean's legs losing their strength; it had been more like Dean trying to make himself as small as possible.

He had no idea what to do with his hands. Sam clenched and clenched them by his sides, terrified of making the wrong decision. Should he shake Dean out of it? Slap him back to reality? Avoid touching him?

The first two options seemed to only add more violence to whatever Dean was currently experiencing and Sam couldn't bring himself to do that. The third one was a bit pointless now that he'd already done enough damage. But to see Dean trapped inside his mind like he was and not DO anything...

When Dean stopped staring straight-ahead and begun staring at his own chest instead, Sam had honestly hoped that it was over. But he was wrong again.

Dean's panting breaths of before became even faster, something that Sam was sure was impossible. His brother's whole frame became more frantic, like a coiled spring ready to snap, as Dean's hands started to pat his own stomach. The gesture was shy at first, like he was afraid to touch himself, but quickly it turned into violent, stabbing motions.

Sam had no choice but to grab Dean's hands before he could hurt himself.

Dean's shallow breaths stopped altogether, as did his frenetic movement, as if the touch of skin on skin had shut down Dean's brain. Sam found himself holding his own breath, waiting for Dean's next one.

It never came. Whatever nightmarish hallucination Dean was trapped in, it was going to kill him if Dean didn't started to breathe in the next couple of seconds and Sam had no idea of how to make him do that.

Sam's hands moved from Dean's wrists to his shoulders, shaking his brother as hard as he could. "Dean, please," Sam pleaded. "Don't do this to me. You can't do this to me."

Sam had no idea what he was saying. It was just words, sounds to make up for the oppressing silence that only made Dean's not breathing all the more grotesque. It was a desperate call to bring Dean back from inside his head, even if Sam's foolish actions had been the ones to push him too far. Sam didn't care what his mouth said. He just needed Dean to... "Breathe, Dean! Come on!"

What the hell had he been thinking? Why the fuck had he even opened his mouth without knowing more about what was going on with Dean? Of course, Sam could argue with himself, there was nothing to know more about if Dean never told him what had really happened. But still…

The real catch 22 was that now Sam had his answer. In fact, he now had pretty good idea that, whatever had happened, it had been bad enough to cause Dean's current reaction.

Sam watched in panic as Dean struggled to get a breath in and failed every single time. Could someone die from something that was only happening inside their heads?

Because that much was clear to Sam. Something in his actions or words had sent Dean straight into some of the very same memories that Sam had been trying to get Dean to share and that memory alone was killing his brother.

"Good one, Sam," Sam whispered to himself, helplessly watching Dean and having no idea of what to do to make it stop.

Desperate, Sam shook Dean by the shoulders, watching his brother's head loll boneless from side of side, barely registering when Dean's skull collided with the car's frame. "FUCKING BREATHE!"

The sound of Dean pulling a breath in and seeing his chest actually expand as it filled with air was the best thing that Sam had ever experienced. It felt like his own chest was expanding, liberating all the weight that had fallen on him.

"I'm sorry... I'm so sorry," Sam found himself whispering over and over again, his hands moving from Dean's shoulders to his head, pressing his shaking brother's frame against his own chest, needing to feel Dean's chest expand against his to make sure that his brother was back. "I'm so sorry."

Sam couldn't even tell what he was most sorry about; that something so horrible had happened to Dean while Sam was around and that he hadn't been able to do a thing to stop it or had even taken notice of it; or that his reckless actions had pushed Dean so far that it had almost killed him. Or simply the fact that, one way or the other, there was nothing that Sam could do to easy Dean's pain.

Dean didn't said a word when Sam finally managed to get them both to their feet and back inside the Impala. He didn't say a word as Sam steered him towards the back seat instead of the passenger's seat and gently pushed him down.

They remained in silence, a heavy, laden silence all the way to Bobby's place and it was only five minutes away from getting there that Dean finally replaced his accusing silence with soft snoring.

Sam found himself driving in circles around Singer's Salvage, like a shy shark around a nice piece of meat. He told himself that he was doing it to give Dean some more time to rest, now that he had finally settled into a somewhat peaceful sleep. But Sam knew better than that. He was really doing it for Bobby.

Deep down, Sam knew that he would need time to coach his face into not betraying his feelings and concerns towards Dean the minute they stepped inside Bobby's house.

He had done enough already by forcing Dean into facing something that he far from being ready to face. Sam wasn't about to allow his face to scream out loud Dean's secret the minute they passed Bobby's threshold.

/(O|O)\\

Bobby wasn't home when they got there, something that Dean was grateful for because of the respite it had bought him. When the dog bark had finally awakened him, they were already at the older man's front porch. Dean needed some time alone with Sam before either of them could face Bobby.

Sam, however, seemed to be doing his best to avoid Dean, jumping out of the car the second the engine stopped and moving to the trunk to get their bags without his eyes meeting Dean's even once. By the time Dean had pushed himself into a sitting position, Sam was already opening the door to Bobby's house with their spare key that they usually carried.

"Sam," Dean called out before his brother could disappear up the stairs with their bags. "We need to talk."

Sam stopped on the fourth step, shoulder slumping down like a thief caught right when he was sure his escape was a certainty. His footsteps were heavy as he came back down and set the two green duffel bags on the boarded floor of Bobby's hallway.

Dean was glad Sam kept quiet, leaving him to lead the conversation and not even trying to pretend he didn't knew what Dean wanted to talk with about.

"When Bobby gets here," Dean started, "I don't want you to tell him anything about what happened."

Sam blinked, a slight blush covering his cheeks. It was born out of aggravation more than out of shame. He looked surprised and a bit disappointed that Dean needed to make that point clear. "Dean... I would never tell him anything without your say so," Sam sputtered. "You have to know that."

Dean nodded. He knew that; he also knew that Bobby would look at them for three seconds and guess something was wrong.

"You look like someone ran over you puppy... several times," Dean told Sam, guessing that he probably didn't look much better. "Don't—" Dean stopped Sam before he could say any thing more. "— look... whatever happened, happened and I'—" Dean swallowed the bile pilling up inside his mouth, "I'm dealing with it, okay?"

"I could help," Sam ventured in a low voice.

Dean fought the urge to scream that there was nothing to help about. He bit his lip to stop the angry words from leaving. It wasn't Sam's fault. "I know you could, but I have to do this my way" Dean stated in no uncertain terms. "I don't wanna talk about it, I don't wanna think about it, I don't want to remotely remember it even happened. What I want is for you to stop looking at me like I'm going to break and for Bobby to stay in dark about this. Are we clear?"

"Stay in dark about what?" Bobby's voice cut in, coming from the back door. Framed against the light coming in from the opened door, all they could see was the older hunter's silhouette. "You don't call anymore?"

Dean tried to hide his startled look the best he could, hiding behind a smirk. "Afraid we'll catch you red-handed with one of your girlfriends, Bobby? What was the name of that lady with the crazy hair-do again? Mavis? Tracy?"

Bobby frowned at him, silently warning the younger hunter to drop that particular line of self-amusement. Truth was, Dean was anything but amused; he just hoped that Bobby would be embarrassed or annoyed enough to forget all about wh—

"You didn't answer my question," Bobby reminded him, his grey eyes already looking for answers in the Winchesters faces and stance. His eyes landed like laser beams on Dean's cast. "And what the hell happened to you?"

Sam cleared his throat, distracting Bobby from Dean's 'deer-in-the-headlights' impression. "I dented you're gate," he blurted out. "Dean was hurt in our last hunt and I was driving and… well…" Sam fumbled, his hands cursing through his hair, looking sheepishly and repentant according to the story he was weaving. "We were hoping to get it fixed before you'd noticed."

"Is that so?" Bobby asked in that half annoyed, half digging-for-bull-crap tone of his.

Dean, grateful that Sam had managed to come up with an almost believable lie both for their words and their appearances, jumped on the construction of their fake excuses. "Yeah, you know how Sam's driving is," he piped in. "The only reason he's still breathing is because most of the damage was on your front gate and not on my baby."

The intensity of Bobby's gaze eased up, a sure sign that he was actually buying what they were saying. He moved to drop the bags filled with groceries on his hybrid mix of library/kitchen. "What were you boys hunting?"

Sam exchanged a look with Dean, suddenly worried that they might blurt out two different things.

"Chupacabra," Dean answered, sticking as close to the truth as he could.

Bobby looked at Sam, his eyebrow raising. "That the same Chupacabra you asked me to pass along to another hunter, Sam?"

Sam could only nod. There was no point in denying the phone call he'd had with the older hunter when the hunt at the Cahuilla's camp had come along, and with it the chance to get Dean out of his deal.

"Thought you said that Dean was okay, that you were giving up on that because something else had come along?"

Sam opened his mouth, but nothing was coming out. He couldn't say that something had come along, not without telling Bobby what they had been hunting at the camp. And that would be just too close to the truth for comfort.

"Damn tornado came along, that's what," Dean answered for him. "Nearly blew us both to the Land of Oz, and you know how I feel about wicked witches, don't you Bobby?" he added a wink for effect.

Bobby ignored him, his gaze going back to that analytic state that made Dean feel like he was always guilty of something.

"Besides, I'm _fine_," Dean added. "It's only a broken wrist… just didn't feel like treading through the hot desert looking for a goat-eating mutant with an itchy-as-hell cast."

/(O|O)\\

Bobby's gaze didn't waver. Sam knew that Dean was perfectly aware of the fcat that he looked anything but fine. There were deep shadows under Dean's eyes and a pallor tone to his skin that could have only be caused by deep weariness and pain.

And, even Dean didn't realize it, there was this nervous energy about him that was obvious to everyone else. The air around Dean hummed like his skin was pure electricity, an elastic band stretched too far and ready to snap.

"Look, I'm tired, I'm cranky and I smell like last week's socks," Dean admitted as he made his retreat. "Dibs on the hot water," he called to the other two men as he climbed the stairs.

Sam stood silent, watching Dean disappear in the upper floor. As he bent down to pick up his bags to follow Dean, he found Bobby looking at him, expectantly.

"So," Bobby let out as soon as Sam met his eyes. "What the hell's going on here? And skip the bull crap this time, will ya?"

Sam swallowed the truth that was just begging to burst out of his mouth and took his time putting the bags back on the floor. Not telling Bobby about the events of the past days made him feel like a giant blue whale, trapped inside a tiny barrel where, if he as much as breathed too deep, everything would come spilling out.

He couldn't tell Bobby what the older man was really asking, but there was something that he could tell him. "I found a way to keep Dean out of Hell."

Bobby gave him a long look, the sharp man's eyes probably seeing more than Sam wished to show. When Bobby turned to fetch two cold beers from the fridge, Sam felt like he could finally take a deep breath.

"Let's hear it then," Bobby voiced, fingers twisting the cap of one of the beers before handing it over.

Sam almost sighed in relief at the chance of finally moving to some other topic of conversation other than the big pink elephant in the room.

"It's a bidding sigil," Sam started, taking of sip of the offered drink. It fell like a ton of bricks on his empty stomach. Sam couldn't even remember the last time he or Dean had eaten. "We'll need some stuff to make a special paint for it and the symbols need to be drawn directly on Dean's skin."

Bobby scratched his beard, his voice close to a whisper. "And how the hell are we gonna do that without Dean knowing what the things for and the whole deal with the crossroad's demon getting revoked?"

Sam's smile grew across his face, genuine happiness for the first time since he stopped the Impala on the side of the road. He pulled an orange vial out of his jacket, white pills dancing inside as he shook it. "We use these."

/(O|O)\\

Despite the fact that he was exhausted, Dean was sure he wouldn't be able to close his eyes for long enough to fall asleep without seeing the Popobawa's figure looming over him.

However, the minute his head touched the pillow and he let himself absorb the familiar smells of dust and old books that seemed to permeate Bobby's whole place, Dean slept.

He was in a meadow, tall green grass dancing under the gentle caress of the wind and tickling his bare feet. Despite the fact that Dean couldn't remember ever being there before, he knew exactly where to go.

Left of him, there was a well. A stone built well, looking so old that some of the mold covered stones were cracked and broken.

With the warm sun beating down his neck, Dean figured that he could use a sip of fresh water and, even though he had never been there, even though he had no idea of whom or when that well had been built, Dean knew that inside it was the most fresh and delicious water that he would ever taste.

His mouth already watering at the prospect of the fresh drink, Dean soon realized that getting to the water would be harder than he'd thought.

There was no bucket.

In fact, Dean couldn't see any sort of mechanism to bring the fresh water from the depths of the earth to the surface.

He picked up a stone from the grass filled ground and cleaned it from the fresh soil that clang to it before tossing it inside the well.

He remembered doing that on lakes and ponds, when he and Sam were young kids and they had the time to be young kids.

The 'plop' that the stone should have caused when it hit the water inside the well never came and Dean leaned inside.

"Is there anyone in there?" he found himself asking.

When no answer came, Dean picked another stone and tossed it inside just like he'd done with the first. Again, there was no sound of stone hitting water.

"Why don't you answer?" Dean found himself yelling, leaning over the side of the well, his voice echoing in the cold stone. "I'm thirsty!"

Talking about it only made it worse. Dean could feel the thirst gnawing at his stomach, eating his insides like it was a beast with tiny, sharp teeth.

Before, distracted as he had been with the softness of the grass and the warmth of the sun and the bright color of the sky, the growing _need_ for water had been easy enough to ignore. Now, it was the only thing that he could think of.

Dean threw a third stone, hoping against hope that this would be the time he would hear a hopeful splash. Again, the stone fell silently.

"Why won't you answer me?" Dean yelled in despair.

It wasn't a splash of stone on water that answered Dean's call. It was a wail. Someone crying. A baby crying.

Worried that his stones had hit the kid, Dean leaned over the edge of the well. It was so dark inside that he couldn't see more than a couple of feet down, nowhere near the bottom of the deep well.

He looked around, hoping that some flashlight might materialize out of thin air or maybe a match or a friggin' lighter...

As far down as Dean could see, there was no one inside the well. And no baby, even though the crying went on and on and on until Dean had to use both his hands to cover his ears and stop himself from screaming himself raw to drown the baby's cry.

There was no one else around.

And yet, it was impossible to mistake the clear impression of hands on his back as Dean felt himself being pushed forward, falling inside the well.

All around him, there was nothing but dark walls, rushing past his eyes as he fell faster and faster, deep inside that hole on the ground that seemed to have no bottom.

Dean looked up, a circle of blue sky shrinking at a distance as the opening of the well grew further and further away.

There was someone leaning against the side of well, a sadistic smile on a man's lips.

Before the darkness engulfed him, Dean realized that he was looking at himself.

/(O|O)\\

Dean woke up with a silent gasp, breath trapped inside his chest like a hungry lion inside a cage.

He was alone in the room that Sam usually shared with him when they were staying at Bobby's. Dean was glad for that.

After his little freak out by the side of the road, the last thing that Dean wanted was for Sam to witness his restless sleep. Besides, whatever that had been, Dean was pretty sure that it had nothing to do with what had happened to him. In fact, Dean was pretty sure it had nothing to do with anything.

His stomach rebelled on him, like it had inside the dream, and Dean raced to the bathroom at the end of the hall. The second he was in range of the toilet, his body tried to expel as much bile as it possibly could. It would've been nicer if Dean had had actually something in his stomach to puke out.

The image of the red mass that the coroner had taken out of the Cahuilla kid's dead body came back to Dean's mind. He couldn't help but to assume that there was some kind of connection in between his upset stomach and the possibility that the Popobawa had left the same kind of damage inside his body.

Dean locked the door and stripped his sweat soaked clothes to stand in front of the small mirror in Bobby's bathroom. His body looked the same as always, but Dean _felt_ different. He felt… fuller.

Running a hand across his flat stomach, Dean couldn't help but imagining something growing beneath his skin, bigger and bigger until he could no longer hide from himself that something was wrong.

Standing on his side, Dean looked closer at his reflection. It could be his imagination, but his stomach seemed different, slightly bulging meat where there used to be nothing but toned muscle.

Dean turned his back abruptly on the mirror and turned the showerhead on. He could feel himself breathing faster, shallow intakes of air that did nothing to quiet the surge of panic inside his chest.

He couldn't deal with this now. Not on top of everything else. But he couldn't live with the doubt either, not if this thing could kill him before the deal's deadline was up.

Sam was trying his best to keep Dean alive, to keep him out of Hell. The least Dean could do was give him as much time as he could by staying alive.

Going to some clinic near Bobby's was out of the question. Bobby was well known in town and everyone had seen Sam and Dean with the older man at one point or another. It would be only a matter of time until someone blabbered.

The nearest clinic that Dean felt safe enough to go was an hour's drive away. Dean cranked the music up all the way there.

/(O|O)\\

"So, doc… what's the verdict?" Dean asked in a tone more confident that he could even hope to be.

He felt vulnerable in that doctor's office, without his layers of shirts and with nothing more in between his skin and other people's eyes other than a thin, blue paper gown.

When the nurse had told him to take off his clothes from the waist up and lay down on the gurney for the doctor to examine him, Dean had almost balked and run away.

It was a futile reaction on his part, and one that only served to make Dean angrier with himself. He _knew_ that he needed the doc to tell him whether or not he had something inside him, and he fucking _knew_ that the doctor wouldn't be able to do that just by looking at his admission form. At some point, some form of exam had to happen. Still, Dean's palms kept in getting sweaty, no matter how many times he cleaned them against his blue gown or how many times he told himself that he was being a baby about the whole matter.

Dean felt himself relax a small degree when the doctor turned out to be a woman with kind eyes that kind of reminded him of Ellen.

She'd taken some blood, poked and probed his stomach and announced that she wanted to do a CT scan on him.

From the carefully composed look on her face when she returned with his results, Dean could guess that the news wasn't going to be that good.

"Mr. Singer," she started, her hand inviting him to sit across from her. "I'm afraid the news isn't the best." She paused, grabbing the stack of papers on her desk. From the other side of the table, Dean could read the fake name he'd given her on the top page. "The CT scan confirmed what I had already felt when I examined your abdomen, Mr. Singer, which is the presence of a large mass lodged alongside your stomach.

She stopped again, waiting for her words to sink in. It was a compassionate pause that spoke of too much experience in giving those kind of news and knowing that anything that she tried to rush by would simply go unheard.

However, Dean doubted she'd ever treated someone infected by some mutant Djinn's spawn.

"I would like to operate on you as soon as possible, Mr. Singer," she went on, setting the papers on the table and focusing her green eyes on her newest patient. "In this case, time truly is of essence."

Dean swallowed around his suddenly dry mouth, thrusting his hands inside his jeans to stop them from shaking. A part of him already knew what she would find out; a smaller portion, however, had still been holding on to the hope that this would be the one time in his life when Dean would actually get lucky. He should've known better.

"So," Dean started, his voice coming out hoarse and broken. He stopped, clearing his throat before trying again, "so, what are you saying here? This thing can kill me?"

"We're not there yet, " the doctor said, her voice gentle. "So far, your blood work isn't showing any of the cancer markers, which is good," she paused, flipping through a page filled with rows of numbers. "There is however, a hormone here that I couldn't quite identify, so that has me a little bit worried," she confessed earnestly. Dean was tempted to give her the coroner's phone number, so that the two of them could share their frustration about monster-hormones.

"Either way," she went on, "I won't know for sure the type of tissue growth we're dealing here with until I go in and collect a sample. After that, if we determine it to be benign, it's just a matter of cutting it out."

"And if I choose not to?" Dean asked. His clock was ticking even without that thing inside of him. If this was something that he could just push and stall until after his time was up and then deal with it if he was still around, then it would be better than to risk going into some OR and have the doc pull some monster-alien-bag-pipe out of his stomach.

He could deal with the nausea. He could deal with the extra paunch in his belly. Explaining what that was and how it'd gotten there… that he couldn't.

"I realize that this is a lot to take in on such a short notice, but I assure you, Mr. Singer that however you feel now, it's bound to become worse," the doctor warned him, her sympathetic and yet no nonsense voice cutting through Dean's thoughts. "This thing is currently five inches long and already it's pressing against the surrounding organs. The larger you allow it to grow, benign or not, it will eventually cause your internal organs some major trauma. You're stomach wall will grow more and more sensitive, leading to more vomiting; it will start pressing against your large intestine, your bladder…"

"Okay," Dean stopped her, raising one hand and sinking lower in his chair. Maybe his dream/flashback/vision/whatever the hell it had been by the side of the road, hadn't been that off after all. She was making it sound like he would eventually implode. "I get the picture, I really do."

Dean took a deep breath, resisting the urge to put his hand over his stomach and feel the mass moving. How the hell was he going to explain a major surgery to Bobby or Sam? "When can we do this?"

The doctor gave him a reassuring smile. "Let me check with my assistant."

/(O|O)\\

Two days. That was how fast the doc had managed to get Dean scheduled to be cut into. If her face or her words hadn't been clear enough to let Dean know the seriousness of his condition, the amount of pushing around and bending backwards that she had done to get him in an OR that soon when there were so many others waiting, told Dean more than enough.

Dean was trying not to think too much about the actual procedure, because every time his mind veered towards the prospect of lying naked and unconscious under the bright lights of the operations' room, at the mercy of people he would probably never even meet, was enough to get him panting for breath and his heart pounding against his ribcage like it was trying to get out.

Instead, he was concentrating on what he was going to tell Bobby and Sam to justify the surgery. Or his absence.

Dean had no other choice, he knew that. He told himself that over and over in the drive back to Bobby's place.

He had told Sam that he wanted to be saved, that he didn't want to die; this was just part of keeping that promise.

Dean wondered if he could make up some trip, say he needed some time for himself. That should buy him at least a week… if Sam would ever agree to letting Dean out of his sight this close to the crossroad's deadline.

Telling them the truth meant telling Bobby what had happened to him and further worrying Sam. It was not an option Dean even wanted to consider.

He could, of course, just pack his things and leave. Stay in the hospital under the fake name he'd given at the clinic, muddle through whatever came out on his own.

Sam and Bobby would worry sick about him, but Dean also knew that they would forgive him when he came back.

If Dean came back at all.

If Sam hadn't been able to break that damn deal so far, it was highly unlikely that he would be able to do so in the eleventh hour, even if Dean was willing to give his brother every last second that he could manage away from the hellhounds' claws.

Maybe it was best if Dean left and stayed gone.

His decision made, Dean drove the rest of the way to Bobby's in a state that could almost be called happiness. One way or the other, he had one more day to spend with his family and Dean wasn't going to let impending surgeries or imposing memories ruin that for him. He was going to enjoy their company and ignore all else.

/(O|O)\\

Just one more day.

Dean had disappeared for most of the previous day, claiming that he had needed to clear his head; Sam hated the hidden implications in that statement and the reasons why Dean's head needed 'clearing' at all, but the man's absence from Bobby's place had come very much in handy.

It wasn't that the spell was all that hard; but it required a lot of work when only two were trying to reproduce a ceremony that usually involved the whole tribe.

The mix that they needed for the spell was almost ready and things could move a lot faster if Sam and Bobby didn't need to hide what they were doing every time Dean walked in the room.

And for all that Dean had been absent the past day, he was over-present in the current one.

For some reason, Dean seemed to have his mind set on getting them away from Bobby's study, grab a few beers and spending the day by the lake. Granted, it was a beautiful day and the small body of water near Bobby's house had always been one of Dean's favorite spots. But they were busy trying to save Dean's life, even if Dean couldn't know that.

After the third consecutive time that he'd had to tell Dean that they couldn't join him in whatever activity he'd suggested, Sam felt kind of guilty.

Dean was bored and probably trying to avoid being left alone with his thoughts as much as he could; Sam could understand that.

But it was all about priorities and, as much as Sam wanted to say yes to Dean and just abandon what he was doing, he also knew that he couldn't.

Sam had been forced to lie and say that he had promised Bobby to help him with some research for a case and that no, it could not wait a couple of hours because lives were at stake.

Technically, it wasn't a lie. Sam and Bobby had spent part of their day doing research on the Cahuillas' records and trying to figure out how much of the historical events surrounding the tales of incredible warriors that no one could defeat were actual references to the same spell that they were about to try on Dean, or due to sheer human bravery and skill.

And there really were lives at stake, namely, Dean's; as well as Sam and Bobby's ability to live with themselves if this failed.

Still, it hurt to see the abandonment and loneliness in Dean's eyes as he picked a six pack and left them alone.

"We'll make it up to him once we've saved him," Sam said, more to himself than to answer Bobby's questioning eyebrow.

"This is a bad idea," the older man said for the tenth time. "There is no record anywhere of how long this spell lasts and what the hell happened to the men that used it."

Sam sighed. They had already gone over that same point countless times. Bobby was right, of course. They simply didn't had enough information about what they were about to do.

They also didn't have a choice.

"Five months ago," Sam voiced, tired eyes meeting Bobby's and seeing the same weariness there, "I would've agree with you and would've taken the time to dig deeper. But now..." he said, running a hand through his hair and feeling the grime in it. "Now we're running out of time and this is the best chance we have. Whatever happens after... we'll deal with it then."

Bobby nodded heavily, not exactly agreeing with what they were about to do, but certainly agreeing with the level of despair that they had reached. "So, when do you want to do this?"

Sam looked at the spot where Dean had walked out with enough beers to give him a happy buzz. "Tonight... we do this tonight."

TBC

AN: Many thanks to **Greeneyes_fan**, who so bravely and effectively took over beta-reading duties for this chapter. Any remaining mistakes are my fault, because I can't leave these things well alone after they've been proof read *g*


	10. Chapter 9

_What has happened so far:_

_With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper._

_Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities._

_Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare._

_Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels. _

_The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests._

_When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins._

_In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal._

_Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California._

_Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body._

_The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp._

_Dean finally figures out what the monster is: a mutate Djinn, bent on sodomizing young men until they tell everyone what has been done to them. The African tribe that had first encountered such a thing had called it a Popobawa._

_At the camp, Dean acts as bait to kill the Popobawa and lets Sam believe that they are hunting a Succubus._

_The monster, stronger than him, breaks Dean's right wrist and is about to attack him once again when Sam, who had been sent on a wild goose chase by his brother, finds the two and distracts the Popobawa long enough for Dean to kill it._

_Chief Ahtuapu thanks the Winchesters for their help and gives Sam, as he had promised, the means necessary to break Dean's deal. A powerful spell that will protect Dean from any kind of action that would cause him harm. After it is done, no man, beast or supernatural being can ever break Dean's skin._

_Sam drives Dean to a clinic and forces him to have his wrist checked. While waiting on Dean, Sam remembers Dean's previous comments about an evil 'bat-man' when he was drunk and realizes that the monster that they'd just killed couldn't possibly be a succubus as Dean let him believe. Instead of holy-water and a exorcism, Dean had killed the monster with just a knife._

_Sam figures that Dean knows more than he's letting on and that the only way for him to have that extra knowledge is if Dean himself had been a victim of thing that had been attacking young men at the Indian camp._

_On their way to Bobby's, Sam confronts Dean about his doubts and sends Dean into a brutal flashback that almost kills Dean._

_After making sure that Sam will not divulge his secret to Bobby, Dean escapes to sleep while Sam and Bobby plot to put the spell into action and prevent Dean from being taken by the crossroad's demon._

_Spooked by a nightmare and with the knowledge of what had been found inside the other men attacked by the Popobawa, Dean seeks help in a clinic outside of Bobby's area._

_The doctor who sees him discovers that he has in fact a mass growing near his stomach and strongly advises him to surgery._

_Dean agrees and sets the date for two days from there... exactly at the same time that Bobby and Sam plan to drug him and mark his body so that no external source can ever harm Dean. Including well meant doctors trying to cure him._

_This is what happens next..._

_

* * *

_

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\NINE

The water was lazily slapping against the shoreline, producing a gentle flapflapflap sound that was only interrupted by the occasional call of one bird or another.

Dean was lying in the dry grass, fingers of one hand skimming through the swinging water, beer bottle all but forgotten, clenched precariously between two digits of the other hand. He was looking at the clouds, watching them go by at the speed of the winds in the stratosphere like it was a slow moving car race.

Out there, with nothing but wild ducks on the water and beetles on the ground, the world was simple; uncomplicated. Moving at the speed of one slow turn of the planet.

It was not every day that one found himself wishing he was a beetle. The bug kind, not the famous music band kind.

Even though Dean was fully aware that neither Sam nor Bobby could have guessed the importance of that day for him, it was hard not to take it personally when both men turn out to be too busy to drink one lousy beer with him. Reason and logic were fine and dandy on a good day, but on that day, they weren't doing a damn thing for the sharp pain and the tightness growing inside Dean's chest.

He guessed that being ignored was better than the alternative. Sam and Bobby treating him like some delicate flower that couldn't be left alone because of what had happened and always fearful that a single disappointment might shatter him.

It was bad enough that Sam had figure out most of what had happened. The looks Sam had given him all the way to Bobby's place…

Then, and still now, it made Dean feel less than human, made him feel like there was this giant stain in front of him and that, when people looked, that filth was all that they would ever see.

Dean turned his head and looked at the quiet waters, his eyes squinting and pulling at the tight skin of his face. Sunlight shimmered over the surface, giving off rich golden tones that made it look warmer than it actually was. It looked inviting enough…

Decision made, Dean drank the rest of his beer and started taking off his clothes. There was never anyone around; he and Sam had spent enough summers there to know that. Besides, the only two people who could walk in on him skinny-dipping where currently locked in the same room, working some case for some stranger that Dean would never even get to know.

It was as close to being all alone in the world as a person could get.

/(O|O)\\

"What the hell happened to you?"

Sam hadn't intended to sound so harsh, but when Dean walked in, he hadn't been able to stop himself.

Dean's hair was plastered to his forehead, his lips were pale white and there were blotches of wetness in his shirt and pants.

"Did it start raining?" Sam tried again, peering at the opened window in the kitchen.

He and Bobby had been so engrossed in finishing the last details of the spell's ink before Dean came back that they hadn't taken notice of either weather or time passing by. Only when the last ingredient had been added and all that was missing was Dean, did they realize that he hadn't returned yet.

The window, however, showed Sam only a setting sun in a dark but cloud free sky.

"I was at the lake," Dean offered sheepishly. He had that lopsided grin on his face that both Sam and Bobby recognized as Dean being slightly drunk.

"And what? Fell in?" Sam offered, sounding slightly alarmed at the possibility. Dean drunk, Dean drowning in the lake... They were so close now... if something happened to Dean before they had a chance to perform the ritual, Sam knew he would never forgive himself.

Sam reached out, briefly touching Dean's cold skin before Dean flinched away. The brief contact was enough for Sam to realize that his brother was freezing cold.

Bobby, silently observing the brothers' interactions, cleared his throat. "This ain't California, boy," he pointed out, grabbing a dishtowel and throwing it Dean's way. "The water on that lake must be cold as a witch's tit by now."

Dean grabbed the towel in midair and used it to soak most of the water dribbling from his hair into his neck. "Yeah, I hear you... think I'm gonna grab a hot shower."

Bobby exchanged a look with Sam before nodding to Dean. "You do that," he said gruffly. "We'll have that beer when you look less like of an icicle."

The second Dean was out the door, Sam was already grabbing three beers and pulling the crushed pills out of his pocket.

"You sure that will knock him out for the amount of time we need?" Bobby whispered, watching as Sam expertly grabbed a piece of paper to work out an improvised funnel to pour the fine powder in to one of the beers. It didn't look like this was the first time Sam had done something like this.

Sam caught Bobby's questioning look. "It was the flu," he started, a faint blush galloping from his neck up. "Dean's fever was high and he was being kind of pig-headed about what he would and would not take, so I... slipped him his meds... and then there was the time he was shot in the ass—" Sam stopped himself, watching Bobby's eyebrow raise. "Yes, this will knock him out for long enough."

They had already set the space they would use in the basement of Bobby's house. A blanket had been spread out on the floor over the necessary sigil, an exact replica of the one that they would need to draw on Dean's skin. The ink and the candles were already there, everything set to start the minute they had Dean ready.

Sam's stomach flopped one more time as he thought about what he was doing. They were about to drug Dean, drag him to the basement, strip him and give him what was tantamount to a tattoo... all of that without his knowledge or consent.

On any given time, it would be enough to make Sam's skin crawl at the abuse; now, just a few days after he had learned about Dean's sexual assault...

When Dean came back, freshly showered and greeting them with an honest smile, Sam almost lost the battle with his rebelling gut and threw up. Instead, he swallowed the bile and offered an answering smile of his own as he handed Dean his beer.

_The_ beer.

One day, Sam was sure, Dean would forgive him for this as well. Probably sooner than Sam would ever forgive himself.

/(O|O)\\

Sam hated candlelight and the way it hit skin.

Preoccupied by the more complex parts of the spell, Sam hadn't given much thought to the matter of Dean's bruised body being exposed to Bobby's view once they stripped him and started to paint the symbols on his body.

He had, however, expected the candlesticks that they would be using to light Bobby's basement, to be too dim and weak for the Bobby to make much of the patterns spread throughout Dean's skin.

Candlelight, however, sucked. It reflected off Dean's healthy skin like gold, accentuating the darker areas where the bruises were. It was impossible not to see the big bruise on Dean's chest, the one that looked like a butterfly and that Sam had allowed himself to ignore the first time he'd seen for the bizarre shape that it had; it was impossible to deny that the circular brands of darker flesh around Dean's wrists were from someone -_something_- pressing hard and pinning him down.

To his credit, Bobby didn't say a word.

Neither of them was up to talking much, either way. What they were doing was grim enough that they just wanted it done and over with. Talking would only be a waste of time.

Between the two of them, they carried Dean's unconscious body to the basement as soon as the laced beer knocked him out. Bobby left the task of stripping Dean to his boxers to Sam, busying himself with lighting candles and getting bowls and brushes ready around the blanket on the floor.

After that, they lost themselves in the ritual itself. Each symbol needed to be painted in a certain location, while uttering certain words, all done in a specific order.

Sam cringed as Bobby's applications drew him closer and closer to Dean's bruised chest; he could see Bobby's jaw working harder to keep himself from saying anything. Inside, Sam knew that the older man's brain was already working on the puzzle before his eyes.

The whole thing took them over half an hour and by the time they were done, Bobby's knees were not too happy with him and Sam was sweating.

Dean, on the other hand, was shivering on the floor. Despite the wool blanket that they had put down in hopes to offer some form of barrier in between Dean's skin and the cement floor, it wasn't enough to keep the almost naked man warm.

"Damn," Bobby let out, sitting back against the wall. He pulled his cap off, watching their handy work. Dean looked like the end result of a five year old let loose with a bottle of iodine.

The 'paint' that had resulted from the mix they'd made had a yellow-ish tinge to it that turned more of a red-tone when in contact with skin. And Dean was covered in the stuff, almost from head to toe.

"Now what?" Bobby asked, watching as Sam took a similar position to his, leaning against the opposite wall.

"We wait... I guess," Sam offered with a tired sigh.

Since the night before the hunt at the Cahuillas' camp, Sam couldn't really remember the last time he'd slept for more than one hour here and there. The last couple of days had been spent in a daze of trying to get the spell working as fast as they could and falling asleep only when he really had no other choice.

What had happened to Dean while Sam all but stood right there in the room with him had only made Sam realize that he couldn't risk it anymore. Dean was vulnerable as he was, as all humans were in their mortal condition. The only difference was that, for everyone else, dying meant facing the great unknown; for Dean, it meant a straightforward ticket to Hell.

Now that they had a chance at actually saving Dean, Sam wanted to make sure that the spell was in effect as soon as possible.

Fifteen minutes later they were still sitting there, Dean was still shivering on the floor and nothing had changed. Bobby was beginning to lose his patience, as he soft-whistled some tune that Sam couldn't recognize and Sam had ran out of nails to bite.

"Maybe that's it," Bobby offered, cutting through the silence. "Maybe the symbols just stay on until he washes them off or something."

Sam bit his lip. "I don't know... from what the Chief told me, there was suppose to be _something_ else."

Bobby scratched his beard and set his gaze on the painted figure on the floor. "Well, has the Chief ever actually seen one of these rituals in his life time?" he pointed out, dusting his hands against his jeans and gearing up to get to his feet. "Because these things tend to be made to look more than what they really are on paper and then in re—"

Bobby stopped himself at the same time that Sam jumped to his feet.

At first, neither could be sure if what they were seeing was real or merely a trick of the light. There was a faint shimmer around Dean's head, a blink-and-you've-missed-it glow that went in and out of focus the harder they tried to stare at it.

Soon though, there was no mistaking the golden light that ignited in the patterns drawn on Dean's face and spread throughout the entire design, like a fuse lit on fire, racing from head to toe in the sleeping hunter's skin.

Once it reached the two symmetrical marks on the soles of Dean's feet, the golden light dimmed back to a soft glow before disappearing altogether.

Sam and Bobby released the breath that neither realized he was holding.

"Now it's done," Sam announced, feeling the weigh of the words sinking heavily against his heart.

/(O|O)\\

Dean woke with the distinct feeling that he had overslept and missed something important. He hadn't felt like that since Sam's high school graduation day, when he'd spend the night before hunting a pack of werewolves that had left a deep and shiny, clawed souvenir on Dean's side and had over slept.

His brain was too foggy to immediately tell him where he was and what was going on, but the numbers on the cell phone that Dean grabbed from the nightstand told him that it was still early morning.

There was still some time until he had to meet up with the doc. So why couldn't he shake off that feeling that something was wrong, that he was missing something?

Dean got to his feet, surprised to feel his body stiff and slightly aching. The bruises he'd collected over the past days were beginning to fade and other than his wrist, there was no reason for Dean to be feeling like he'd spent the last couple of hours doing the most intense workout he could remember.

Dean looked at the arms sticking out from the sleeves of his tee-shirt, half expecting to see the muscles quivering in exhaustion there. The last thing he remembered was having a beer with Sam and Bobby, the three of them lost in some idle chatter about the craziest hunters that either had worked with.

Had he really gotten that drunk that he couldn't remember getting to bed? Truthfully, it wouldn't be the first time it happened when they were at Bobby's, enjoying some downtime. But this time had been different; this time Dean was saying goodbye, enjoying every second of their company.

Passing out stinking drunk hadn't been in his plans.

Well, at least his night had been blessedly bizarredreams-free, Dean realized as he wiped the crust from his eyes.

Shuffling his feet in the direction of the bathroom, Dean wondered where the others were. Sam and Bobby had been so busy the last few days that he wasn't even sure if they'd slept at all.

Dean, on the other hand, had slept deeper than he'd managed in a very long time, possibly ever since his father's death.

Something was off.

Dean set the shower running, listening to the familiar gurgle of water climbing up rusty pipes from the boiler at the back of the house and up to the shower head. It had always taken forever to take a warm shower in Bobby's place.

Looking at the mirror was like trying to drive past a car crash and not take a look. Dean tried to see past the pale face and the sunken eyes, hoping he could get a clue why his brain was feeling so off.

His shirt caught his gaze instead. More exactly, the tear on the shirt.

A couple of years back, in some summer month or another, when Dean and Sam had been hunting a couple of water spirits in the swamps of Mississippi, one of the nasty things had bled all over Dean's shirt. When they went back to their motel room, Dean had cleaned it as best as he could, but there had been one stain that he hadn't been able to get rid of. He had literally ripped the shirt trying to get the stain off.

Instead of declaring the shirt as a lost cause, like most people would have, Dean kept wearing it, merely turning it around and wearing the shirt with the tear on the back, instead of the front.

It was a good shirt. Dad had loved it when he still used to wear it. Dean loved that shirt.

But he never forgot about the tear. The tear that was staring right back at him from across the mirror.

Dean knew that he was slightly drunk last night when he had taken a shower and dressed that shirt. Not drunk enough, however, to forget about the damn tear that revealed way too much skin than what he was willing to show, even amongst family. And given that Dean knew he wasn't prone to sleep-stripping, the only logical conclusion was that someone had undressed him and then, at some point and for whatever reason, had redressed him.

The realization that someone had undressed him without his knowledge or consent, descended over Dean's spine like a bucket of iced water. He'd been used and abused, just like before, just like with the...

Dean placed his hands over the healing bruises, the warm touch of his own fingers doing nothing to erase the memory of the creature's cold touch, of its icy grip.

He had killed that thing, Dean was sure of it. If he closed his eyes, Dean could still feel his blade going into to the Popobawa's soft belly and the gush of warm blood coating his fingers. The thing had been dead for sure, if not by Dean's blade, then certainly by the fire where Sam had burned it.

Dean had believed that it was safe to sleep once again, but he could now see how wrong he'd been.

In a haze, Dean tore the offensive shirt off and jerked his boxers down before jumping into the shower.

His teeth were chattering against each other even though the whole bathroom was slowly filling with steam. Everything around Dean had a strange and faded glowy feeling, like he was trapped inside a lying lamp.

Dean closed his eyes hard enough to see white spots and braced himself against the wall. The scalding water was doing nothing for the cold that was growing inside him, stronger and stronger.

He was over-reacting, a distant part of Dean's brain insisted, even as panic rose and screamed at him, shouting that he'd been wrong, that the bat monster was still alive, that it had somehow come to Bobby's place and attacked him again. That somehow, the thing was impervious to knives dipped in lamb's blood; that somehow it was immune to being burned. That even beyond its grave, it was still fucking Dean in more ways than one.

Maybe it wasn't even a Popobawa... maybe it was something so horrendous that hunters hadn't even gotten around to naming it yet; maybe Dean hadn't really killed it after all, because he could still feel the thing's presence right behind him, right now, pressing against his back; maybe Sam had tricked him and never burned the thing...

Maybe, maybe, maybe...

Each one crushed against Dean's shoulders, pushing him further and further down until his knees touched the wet floor. His lungs were burning for air and even through the wetness of the shower, Dean could feel the tears leaking from his eyes.

He had no idea why he was crying; no idea why he couldn't seem to take a lungful of air.

The only thing that Dean knew was that he wasn't safe in there anymore. He couldn't stay under Bobby's roof and let that thing have him again. He had to get out, as fast as he could.

Dean didn't even think about turning the scalding water off; he didn't even stop to grab the bag that he'd packed to take with him to the hospital. Instead, he merely threw on the first pair of jeans and shirt that he could find and grabbed his car keys, not stopping for one second to think what he was going to do next.

He just ran.

/(O|O)\\

Dean had sat behind the wheel in all sorts of conditions in which he really, really shouldn't be behind a wheel.

There was that time when he'd knocked his head so hard that he was seeing double, but Sam was bleeding on the seat next to him so, really he had no choice in the matter. He'd managed to drive mostly in a straight line the entire time, even if the white stripe parting the two lanes of the road kept on wavering and doubling ahead of him.

There was that time when he'd been too drunk to drive, but dad was passed out in the seat next to him and really, after the mess that they'd left behind at the bar where, true, they'd been hustling, but not cheating on anyone. They'd both been three shits to the wind by the time the mob started out for blood and really, staying in the parking to sleep it off was, again, not an option.

Then there were a couple of times Dean could barely remember driving, when he had been hunting alone, but he knew he must have, because he could remember finishing the hunt and then the next thing he could recall was of being in his motel room, passed out in various spots that went from the front door to the bathroom. All Dean could be sure after those times was that he must've driven there himself, because there was no Sam and no dad to do the driving for him.

All of those times, all of those reckless situations, and never once had Dean crashed the Impala. Come close to do it, yes, scarily so, but never put a dent on it.

Now, driving with nothing on his mind but the constant thought of gottagetaway!gottagetaway!gottagetaway!gottagetaway! to keep him company, Dean had no idea where he was going or what he was going to do next. Just that he had to be on the move.

Lost in his need to escape, to keep going forward, it was almost too late when Dean saw a kid step out of nowhere, right in front of the Impala. Time slowed down to a crawl and Dean stared at the face of the little kid he'd been seeing everywhere lately.

By the time Dean's brain informed him that that kid couldn't be real, that he was imagining him, it was already too late. He'd reacted accordingly, cutting the wheel hard to the left to avoid hitting the imaginary child. Unfortunately for the very real SUV driving in his direction in the other lane, Dean wasn't able to doge him as well.

/(O|O)\\

Some people have all the luck, even if most of it is bad luck.

It was hard to forget the guy that Dr. Tyler had just finished admitting to bed nineteen; it was even harder to believe that he had actually managed to get himself into a car crash on his way to being admitted to the hospital for a procedure that would determine if the tumor that had been found in his abdomen just two days ago was malignant or not.

The good part of this guy's luck? He had smashed his car against an SUV and had walked out of it without a single scratch on him. Well, there was some bruising, extensive bruising, but Dr. Tyler had noticed that before, when he'd come to her clinic that first time. They weren't from the car crash at all.

The thing that had struck her as odd at the time of their initial consultation was his reaction, or lack thereof. The news she'd delivered had warranted no reaction whatsoever. No surprise, nothing.

Most people, after hearing that there is a large mass growing inside of them, apart from pregnant women, tend to react a bit more dramatically to the news. Some faint, Some yell. Some cry.

They all react.

And certainly he could have already known what was wrong with him before seeing her, searching her for a second opinion, but Tyler doubted that was the case. He'd been genuinely curious to see what she would find out, honestly invested in knowing what was wrong with him.

And certainly, the tall young man in the leather jacket hadn't struck her as someone who would start crying over bad news, no matter how nasty it might be...

But his reaction had just been... odd. Off the normal tracks.

If she hadn't know any better, she would have said that young Mr. Singer looked like he'd lost a bet.

And there had also been the issue of his intensive preservation of personal space. Some people were just reserved, Tyler knew that. One couldn't really work in healthcare and not realize that personal space meant different things for different people. But most people didn't start sweating or looking for the nearest exit when you breached their personal space for any professional reason.

Most people didn't felt the need to protect themselves or control what went on around them to that extent unless they have a pretty good reason for it.

Given the extend and location of those bruises in Mr. Singer's body, Tyler would say that he must've had his reasons.

Still, Singer had been in control on the day of their previous appointment. Nervous, jittery even, but in control.

The man she had met at the ER, fresh out of a car accident, was the complete opposite of that. Medically, she could assume that it was just a reaction to a near death situation. Speeding car meets equally speeding car head-on, and the end result was, in the best-case scenarios like this one, two shell-shocked drivers.

Personally... Tyler would bet a month's pay that there was something else.

Singer wasn't nervous because life had flashed in front of his eyes; he was nervous because he was stationary, no longer able to move forward. He was running from something and Tyler was sure it wasn't just his medical condition.

Still, unless something medically relevant or illegal was involved, it was none of her business. Her business was to determine what sort of mass was growing inside that young man's abdomen and, if possible, take it out and send him on to live the rest of his life.

The procedure in itself was simple enough. Just a small incision on the left side, about two inches above the navel.

Tyler had long learned that there was no point in wishing things went one way or the other. Disease was disease and no amount of best wishes would ever do a thing about it.

Still, she always found herself rooting for her patients, wishing for the best outcome.

In the case of the troubled Mr. Singer, she wished that the mass was benign and that she would be able to extract it without further complications.

"He's ready for you," Karen, the OR nurse called out to her, hands in the air as she pushed the swinging doors with her hip.

Tyler nodded, turning the flowing water off with her right elbow. It was time to go and find out whether that young man's story would have a happy ending.

He was already lying on top of the table, one arm extended to the side with an IV line already pumping a sedative into his system. Tyler neared his face, seeing him struggle to get a look at her.

"How are you feeling, Mr. Singer?" she asked, noticing the unfocused eyes and droopy eyelids. One more push of anesthetic and he'd be under for the procedure.

A hand, whose grip shouldn't be that strong at that stage of the anesthetic process, grabbed her wrist.

Tyler took a step back, startled and looked at her patient's fingers, curled around her own gloved hands.

"Get… I need you to… out… I need it out," the young man mumbled, forcing the stream of words past his half asleep brain and numb lips. "I need it out… please…"

Tyler blinked and took a deep breath. The intensity of the young man's green eyes was startling and had given her goose bumps. She found herself nodding, even though she knew she was making a promise that she wasn't sure she could keep. Still, it wouldn't hurt to give the troubled young man a little peace of mind before he went under. Odds were, he wouldn't even remember talking to her when he woke up.

The hand grabbing her went lax and the struggling eyelids finally fell over Mr. Singer's eyes. Only then was Tyler able to move and request a new set of gloves. It was time to work at keeping her promise.

/(O|O)\\

It was the freakiest accident ever seen. Never in the history of surgical interventions in that hospital, or any other for that matter, had anyone heard a similar tale. It seemed too unreal to be true.

The dead bodies lined up at the door of the OR, however, attested to the seriousness and reality of the situation.

Electrical malfunction, they were calling it.

The end result had been powerful lights exploding on people's faces and the fire that issued when those sparks connected with the extremely volatile material lying around.

Two of the nurses had come out with mild burns. The anesthesiologist and Dr. Tyler, the ones closer to the big surgical lights above the patient, had been hit by shards of the exploding glass. Dr. Tyler had died instantly.

Surprisingly enough, the patient had been the only one left unharmed, miraculously escaping both the flying glass and the fire.

/(O|O)\\

Dean woke in stages. The smell hit him first and it was the only thing that he needed to find out where he was. The why took a little bit longer but as soon as he remembered what he'd gone to the hospital to do, everything else came rushing back.

His hand, weighing far more than any hand had a right to weigh, struggled to reach his stomach. The telltale patch of gauze and tape that should've been there, was conspicuously absent. Nothing but smooth and warm skin beneath his fingers.

Dean's brows furrowed. There should have been something there, small as it was, even if all the doc had done was take a small piece to analyze.

Fumbling for the call button that Dean guessed to be somewhere near his head, he pressed down as soon as his fingers brushed against the piece of plastic.

A red eyed nurse answered his call a couple of minutes later. Her face was puffy and her nose just as red as her eyes.

"You're awake," she said, trying to put up a smile in her face that only made the lurking sadness stand more obvious. "I'll warn Dr. Ty—"

Dean noticed the way she bit her own lip, stopping the word from exiting her mouth at the same time that her eyes flooded with fresh tears.

"—I'll warn Dr. Marcon that you're awake," she whispered, beating a hasty retreat from the room.

Something had happened. Something bad had happened.

"Wait!" Dean called out, sitting up in his bed. The room did a quick spin on him, only to settle into a somewhat steady focus after a second. "Tell me what's wrong? Where's Dr. Tyler?"

The nurse's carefully maintained posture crumbled in front of Dean's eyes at the mention of the doctor. Tears began falling freely from her eyes as the woman took a step closer to the bed and sobbed.

"There was an acc… accident in the OR," she said. "Dr. Tyler and Dr. Benson… they're dead."

Dean's fingers drifted to his stomach again, slowly realizing why there was no sign of an incision there. "When was this?" he asked, needing to make sure. The suspicion alone was already making his heart race.

"It was a miracle that you were okay," the nurse said, her face lighting up for a brief moment as she looked at him and probably saw how close to being the third victim he'd been. "The whole OR was practically destroyed while you were under," she added with a whisper before leaving.

Dean felt the room do another weird flip that, this time, had nothing to do with him making any sudden movements. His heart was pounding against his chest and, like a distance siren, he could hear the alarms going off at the other end of the leads attached to his chest.

He'd done this, Dean was sure.

He wasn't certain about the details, but he knew that this had happened because of him, because of what he had inside of him. Because of the thing that had put that _disease_ inside of him.

Dean had killed those two people. That was on him, because he'd searched for help outside the hunters' community; because he'd been too chicken shit to face this on his own.

And now, two perfectly innocent people were dead because of him, because somehow the Popobawa's touch prevented others from fixing what the damn monster had done to him.

On impulse, Dean grabbed the wires sticking from under his hospital gown and pulled them out, listening to the shrill sound coming from the monitor before it was silenced.

Dean had to get out of there. It seemed like everywhere he turned, he caused nothing but trouble and pain.

He'd put Sam and Bobby at risk because the Popobawa had followed him to Bobby's place; he had almost killed the guy driving that other car because of some kid that Dean kept hallucinating everywhere he turned; and now Dr. Tyler was dead because she had tried to help him.

He was poison. And the only antidote was to spare others of his presence.

/(O|O)\\

After figuring out that Dean wasn't actually hiding in the back yard, like when they were kids, and that he was no where to be found, for one insane minute Sam wondered if this was all an after effect of the spell. Some fine print that they had missed, where it clearly said that the reason why those who were under the spell's protection were never harmed was because they were gone and thus, no one could touch them.

The second conclusion that Sam had come to was that their plan had backfired and the crossroad demon bitch had came ahead of schedule because of their attempts to weasel out of the deal and collected Dean's soul out of spite.

He couldn't decide which option left a worse taste in his mouth.

The idea that Dean might have just up and left them didn't even crossed Sam's mind. For one, Dean had left all of his things behind.

The presence of a packed bag in his room, however, gave Sam some pause.

"Maybe he never got around to unpacking it?" Bobby suggested from behind him, watching the hurricane of displaced clothes and towels that Dean had left in his wake.

There was a trail of water that drifted from the flooded bathroom to the room Dean had been in. The dripping water in the middle of the kitchen's ceiling had been their first clue that something was wrong.

Sam shook his head. He knew that pack. "No," he said as he looked at the bag he knew to be Dean's favorite. The one he took everywhere with him, even if he was only going to be gone a few hours. Usually, it was packed with guns and weapons. The one he was looking at now had a pair of sweaters and some shirts. Harmless stuff; normal stuff, and so, so very unlike Dean. "No, he was planning on going some where," Sam mused, twisting the shirt in his hands. "I have no idea what happened here."

"Maybe this has something to do with the Popobawa you guys killed?" Bobby offered, breaking the silence.

It took Sam a full minute to realize what Bobby had just said, a minute during which he was sure his mouth was hanging open like some gaping fish. "The—the what now?"

Bobby arched an eyebrow, a clear sign that he did not appreciated being treated like an idiot. Again.

Sam had hoped that the older man wouldn't be able to connect the dots, but even he knew that that was just wishful thinking.

"Cut the crap, Sam. I wasn't born yesterday," Bobby started, his face growing red as he went on. "I saw the damn marks in Dean's chest, the butterfly shape. That shit's classic of a Popobawa's attack. And if that wasn't enough, there was the jittery way you two dumb heads had been acting since you arrived here, like two scared pups. So, now," he paused, taking a step closer to Sam and daring him to lie in his face again, "how about you tell me what the hell happened and you skip the fairy tale this time!"

Sam gulped. He couldn't. Sam knew he couldn't betray Dean like that.

But there was no way that his worried-about-Dean brain would be able to come up with a story good enough to fool Bobby. If he and Dean had been thinking straight, they would've known that there never was a story good enough to fool Bobby. The man knew them better than they knew themselves and right now, Sam needed that. Dean needed that.

"You better sit down, Bobby," Sam started, allowing the weariness that he'd been trying to hide for the past days to finally reach his voice. "You're not going to like what I'm about to tell you."

It didn't take long for Sam to realize that talking about what had happened to Dean was just as bad as finding it out for the first time. He kept waiting to see the recrimination in Bobby's eyes, the accusation that Sam had been too slow to figure out something that had taken Bobby a couple of clues to guess, but he never saw any of those feelings in the older man's eyes.

He saw tears, though, and that was even worse than anything he could have expected.

"Why didn't you boys call me?" Bobby whispered when Sam's voice broke and he couldn't talk any further. "I could've—"

Sam sighed. Too much had gone wrong and no amount of second-guessing was going to solve that. Even if it hurt like hell.

The shrill of Bobby's phone ringing from the kitchen startled them both. It wasn't one of the fake numbers Bobby spread across the hunters' community; no call for the FBI or the NSA or even the local police. Just plain Bobby Singer's phone.

"Yes?" Bobby's gruff voice answered, tone saying clearly that there had better be a good reason for this call because otherwise there would be hell to pay.

"_Mr. Singer, this is the County Hospital calling. We have your nephew, a Dan Singer here with us_," the male voice said from the other side. "_There's been a problem and we'd appreciated if you could come here as soon as possible._"

Sam saw the color draining from Bobby's face and took a step closer, trying to listen to both sides of the conversation.

"What problem?" Bobby pressed.

"_I'm sorry, sir, but I'm not at liberty to say over the phone. If you could please come to our facilities, we'll be happy to provide you with all the information that you need._"

The dial tone hit Bobby's ear with a visible slap and Sam stared at the other man. What the hell had just happened?

"Dan Singer?" Sam asked.

Bobby swallowed, his color not improving one bit. "I guess we know where Dean is."

* * *

AN: As always, my deepest thanks to Jackfan2, whose watcheful eye makes this all the more readable.


	11. Chapter 10

_What has happened so far:_

_With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper._

_Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities._

_Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare._

_Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels. _

_The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests._

_When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins._

_In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal._

_Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California._

_Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body._

_The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp._

_Dean finally figures out what the monster is: a mutate Djinn, bent on sodomizing young men until they tell everyone what has been done to them. The African tribe that had first encountered such a thing had called it a Popobawa._

_At the camp, Dean acts as bait to kill the Popobawa and lets Sam believe that they are hunting a Succubus._

_The monster, stronger than him, breaks Dean's right wrist and is about to attack him once again when Sam, who had been sent on a wild goose chase by his brother, finds the two and distracts the Popobawa long enough for Dean to kill it._

_Chief Ahtuapu thanks the Winchesters for their help and gives Sam, as he had promised, the means necessary to break Dean's deal. A powerful spell that will protect Dean from any kind of action that would cause him harm. After it is done, no man, beast or supernatural being can ever break Dean's skin._

_Sam drives Dean to a clinic and forces him to have his wrist checked. While waiting on Dean, Sam remembers Dean's previous comments about an evil 'bat-man' when he was drunk and realizes that the monster that they'd just killed couldn't possibly be a succubus as Dean let him believe. Instead of holy-water and a exorcism, Dean had killed the monster with just a knife._

_Sam figures that Dean knows more than he's letting on and that the only way for him to have that extra knowledge is if Dean himself had been a victim of thing that had been attacking young men at the Indian camp._

_On their way to Bobby's, Sam confronts Dean about his doubts and sends Dean into a brutal flashback that almost kills Dean._

_After making sure that Sam will not divulge his secret to Bobby, Dean escapes to sleep while Sam and Bobby plot to put the spell into action and prevent Dean from being taken by the crossroad's demon._

_Spooked by a nightmare and with the knowledge of what had been found inside the other men attacked by the Popobawa, Dean seeks help in a clinic outside of Bobby's area._

_The doctor who sees him discovers that he has in fact a mass growing near his stomach and strongly advises him to surgery._

_Dean agrees and sets the date for two days from there... exactly at the same time that Bobby and Sam plan to drug him and mark his body so that no external source can ever harm Dean. Including well meant doctors trying to cure him._

_Dean tries to spend the last day before the surgery with Bobby and Sam, but both of them are too busy to spare him the time. Dean ends up drinking alone by the lake._

_By the time he returns home, everything is already set to start the ritual. Sam hands Dean a beer laced with sleeping pills and, once Dean falls asleep, he and Bobby take Dean to the basement._

_The ritual goes as planned and Sam and Bobby are certain it will work._

_Dean wakes up in his bed the following day, but freaks out when he realizes that his cloths have been moved during his sleep._

_He runs away from Bobby's place and ends up crashing the Impala. Luckily for him, he is taken to the same hospital where he was supposed to meet doctor later that day. Dean does suffer a scratch._

_The doctor promises an almost unconscious Dean that she will do anything in her power to get Dean okay, to take out of his stomach what doesn't belong there._

_She doesn't get a chance of doing anything for Dean, as an electrical charge causes an accident at the OR and both she and the anesthesiologist are killed._

_When Dean wakes up and learns of what has happened, he believes that the Popobawa is the one responsible for what happened and escapes the hospital before anyone gets hurt._

_Meanwhile, Bobby forces Sam to tell him the truth once he figures out the name of the thing that attacked Dean. They are both desperately looking for a missing Dean when Bobby gets a call from the hospital about his 'nephew'._

_This is what happens next..._

* * *

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\TEN

Sam and Bobby stormed through the sliding doors at the County Hospital and froze. There was a sense of barely organized chaos, moving and swirling all around them like a stormy sea; it was disorienting.

Maintenance people were running around, scattered through the corridor and waiting rooms, followed close behind by cleaning crew. Some carried ladders, others clutched spools of wires and cables. One of them had what looked like a Geiger counter in his hands. Most of them looked as if they had absolutely no idea what they were supposed to be doing.

Sam cast a brief questioning look at Bobby but neither said a word. Along with their concern for Dean, the frenetic mood within the hospital sent a dark shiver of foreboding through them both. They felt it. Shared it.

Moving through the confusion, Sam barely missed colliding with a group of guys in suits. The men walked by slowly, looking around carefully like they were cataloging the cracks on the walls and trying to find the answer to all the mysteries of the universe in the patterns they formed.

At the end of the corridor that led away from the reception area, both hunters caught a glimpse of blue uniforms; at least three policemen stood, talking quietly to another guy in a suit. There were two women with them, one of them a nurse. She was crying.

Sam pushed all of these details to the back of his mind. He was there for Dean only.

The possibilities as to why Dean was at the hospital had been eating at him ever since Bobby had hung up the phone and they'd gotten into the older man's car. The Impala, Sam had noticed, was no where in sight either at Bobby's place or the parking lot outside the hospital, which only added to the puzzle. Had Dean _walked_ to get there?

"I got a call about my nephew," Bobby announced as soon as he reached the reception island, where a young man in red glasses sat. "Dan Singer," he supplied before the question could be asked.

The polite smile didn't waver from the man's face as he asked them to wait a moment. Sam took another look around, keeping the sound of fingers hitting the keyboard in the background. Scanning the room, he found himself hoping that his eyes would stumble across Dean, coming out from any of the numerous rooms that surrounded them, a smile in his face as he berate them for taking too long to come and get him.

Dean, however, was no where in sight.

"Ah, yes... Mr. Dan Singer was admitted two hours ago to the psychiatric yard," the young man –'Stevens', according to his name plaque, in letters just as red as his glasses- told them. "Humm... apparently he was transferred out from Surgery... lucky guy..."

Stunned to silence, Sam turned to look at Bobby; the older man's face was a perfect mirror of his own confusion and doubt. Surgery? Lucky? And had the guy actually said that Dean had been committed to the loony house?

"What the hell happened to him?" Sam couldn't help but ask, his voice probably higher than what he'd planned for.

The smile slipped from Stevens' face as he looked at Sam, his eyes already accessing how big of a nuisance Sam was about to become. "Are you related to the patient?"

Before Sam could remember if Dan Singer was listed as having siblings or not, the receptionist had already turned his attention back to Bobby. "You'll need to go to the third floor, sir. They'll provide you with all the details there. Elevators' that way." Stevens turned one side look at Sam once more, before adding a pointed "family members only".

Bobby grabbed Sam's wrist before he could physically react to the indirect prohibition of going any further. Looking angrily at the older man, Sam stood down. The message was clear and it was one Sam knew even before looking into Bobby's eyes: they were working with bare minimum information and false health insurance IDs on top of that; they could not afford to start a scene and call attention to either themselves or to 'Dan Singer'.

With a slight but frustrated nod, Sam took a deep breath, trying to quiet down his urge to just scream and not break 'Stevens' red glasses.

One Winchester in the psych yard was more than enough, and right now they needed more to find out what had happened to Dean than Sam needed to defend his position as Dean's family.

"I'll let you know something as soon as I can," Bobby offered him, making his way to the silver elevator in a quick stride.

Sam sagged against the weight of uncertainty that he could feel pressing his shoulders down. The lobby was teeming with people but Sam was alone in his misery.

Wondering aimlessly through the reception area, ignoring the veiled stinky-eye look that the guy behind the desk kept throwing him, Sam eventually found himself in front of the coffee machine.

He bought a coffee just to have something to do and not go out of his mind.

"... an't keep talking like that," the muffled male voice reached Sam over the clatter of the machine.

"But I know what I saw in there!" a woman's voice replied, the tone slightly pitched and angry. "That shit doesn't happen outside of science fiction, Rob! And you can't just scrub something like that under the carpet and pretend it never happened. Two people died!"

"Alice..."

"Don't Alice me! I was there; I'm the one who will never be able to forget it!"

Sam bent down to pick up his coffee, keeping his face hidden as the clipped sounds of a pair of heeled shoes walked past him and the woman disappeared through a side door that led outside. The door closed so softly behind her that it robbed most of the flare of her angry exit.

Taking a sip of his coffee, Sam made a quick decision. Years of hunting had left him with an acute sense to weird things, and the conversation that he'd partially heard had definitely been weird.

The fact that, apparently, two people had died under suspicious circumstances, at the hospital where Dean had been admitted under even more suspicious circumstances, was more than enough to spike Sam's curiosity.

He found the woman outside, pulling a smoke from the cigarette between her fingers like it was oxygen on a stick. Sam realized that it was the same nurse he'd seen crying when he and Bobby had arrived at the hospital.

"I think I left mine in the car," Sam said, making a show of patting his pockets and looking at the cigarette between the woman's lips. "Would you mind to..."

The nurse blinked tear filled eyes and looked at him, clueless about what he was talking about for half a second before pulling her pack from a pocket and shaking one out.

"Thanks," Sam offered, putting the cigarette in his mouth and fishing for the lighter in his pocket. He really hoped that he wouldn't ruin everything by starting to cough like a high school kid smoking for the first time. Truth was, Sam couldn't remember the last time he'd used the same ruse to start up a conversation with someone. Probably high school.

Sam pulled a careful breath in, resisting the tickle of tobacco as it slid down his throat. "Tough day, hum?" he asked, trying to sound casual and, at the same time, like he already knew all that there was to know.

The woman blinked, again needing to remind herself that she wasn't alone. "Yeah, that's one way to put it," she confessed, her tone dry.

"And the police... do they suspect sabotage?" Sam ventured, guessing that the reason why all those maintenance guys were about was because of something important having malfunctioned. It needed to be something concerning the whole hospital, something high up to justify the use of ladders. "In the electric system?"

To Sam's relief, the woman nodded, finally looking up to meet him in the eye. "That's what they say."

Sam took another drag out of the cigarette, trapping the smoke in his mouth and quickly letting it out. "But you don't..."

Her eyes shifted back to the ground, white shoes scuffing against the rubble and slowly turning red with dust.

"I wasn't there," Sam pushed, trying to look as shifty and uncomfortable as her, "but from what I heard, it just sounds like they're trying to cover up something else," he said, hoping that he was using what little he had heard of her discussion in the right context.

"Who are you again?" she finally asked, suspicion in her voice.

"Vincent, from the cleaning crew," Sam supplied without even blinking. "I started just this week," he added with a roll of his eyes.

"Yeah, not the best week to do that," she agreed, rubbing her left arm. "I was there, you know?" she voiced, pulling at her sleeve so it would completely cover her bandaged arm. "When it happened."

"It wasn't an electrical accident, was it?" Sam nudge her, his mind already going through every supernatural thing that could be explained as an electrical malfunction when civilian minds were too thick to see anything else. "Did you see anything weird?"

She bit her lip, hard enough that Sam was expecting blood when her teeth pulled away. He was betting on it being a poltergeist, or even a ghost. Deep down, Sam just wanted it to be their kind of thing, something that would justify Dean's presence at the hospital in the first place.

"It was that guy they had on the table," she whispered, red, bloated eyes meeting Sam's face steady even as tears started to fall again. "I had a bad feeling about that intervention... we'd broken five needles just trying to get an IV on him... it was going so bad that the patient was holding my hand by the time I finally managed to get a line in," the nurse went on, the raise of her eyebrows telling Sam just how out of the ordinary that was. "And then when Dr. Tyler picked up the electrical scalpel to start the incision, the patient's skin..."

Sam looked at her, seeing the blush creeping up her neck. He waited for her to get passed her embarrassment, his eyes conveying all the understanding that he could manage, silently urging her to go on.

"... his skin started to glow just before the scalpel went crazy and... and killed her," she finished with a sob. "It killed all that were standing to close to him, tried its best to kill all of us."

Sam's breath itched inside his chest, his eyes going back to the bandage on the woman's arm. "Do you... was the patient okay? Do you remember is name?"

The nurse hiccuped into her paper tissue, dabbing at her nose. "He was fine," she said quickly. "I mean, we were afraid at first, because he was really close to the scalpel and there was so much blood... but he didn't had a scratch on him."

Sam resisted the urge to shake her shoulders and get her to spit out the name of the patient. When her mouth finally formed the words, "Dan Singer" Sam felt the world disappear from under his feet.

/(O|O)\\

Bobby wasn't sure what he would find at the end of the corridor. The nurse at the station had called the doctor on duty and they had explained to the concerned 'uncle' why his 'nephew' was currently tied to a bed.

None of it had made a lick of sense to the older man. For one, it was hard to take seriously anything the psychiatrist said because the man looked like the giant yellow bird on Sesame Street. Maybe it was the too yellow hair, or the glasses framing his eyes that made them look too big, maybe it was the shape of the man's nose... Maybe Bobby had been spending too much time near the Winchesters and their craziness was catchy.

Looking around, Bobby was starting to have his doubts.

Big Bird had gone on about psychotic breaks and how Dean was still within age for schizophrenia and was Bobby aware of any history of psychiatric illnesses in his family, talking non stop as they walked down the long corridor that accounted for most of the psych yard. Bobby grunted and nodded his ignorance of all relevant facts just to keep the man walking.

When the psychiatrist stopped in front of a room ominously labeled 'Isolation', Bobby realized that they'd reached their destination. The man in the white coat made no move to open the door and Bobby took a peek through the door's barred window into the room.

The room was mostly dark, but he could still see the long body laying in the bed on the left. The wide strap, fastened around Dean's chest and securing him to the trashed bed, was the source of two others, immobilizing his wrists. Dean's legs were trapped in an identical contraption. Bobby shuddered at the level of immobility being forced on the kid. He knew how Dean 'enjoyed' being helpless like that. "What exactly happened to him?" Bobby asked, working words through the bile in his mouth.

"Well, sir, we know that he underwent a full anesthesia earlier this afternoon but the operation was canceled due to... some unforeseen events in the OR, and that, soon after waking up, Dan tried to escape the hospital's premises—"

"Anesthesia? What sort of events?" Bobby cut in.

"I'm not sure... some technical malfunction, I heard," the psychiatrist provided. "Your nephew was okay, of course, but two hospital employees were killed in the accident."

"Obviously not okay," Bobby said acerbically, looking at his surroundings. His eyes wondered towards the half-closed door next to Dean's. The sounds of a woman screaming were easy to hear outside and inside, through the small slit he could see, Bobby could swear that they were filming _The Exorcist_ all over again.

Bobby had noticed the way the man had stressed out the word 'accident'. He wasn't sure if that was because 'the accident' had been something that they couldn't quite explain, or because he was fearful that 'Dan Singer's family might decide to sue the hospital for putting him at risk. "I want to know exactly what happened to my nephew," Bobby demanded, his tone of voice promising all the consequences that the hospital was probably hoping to avoid over this whole matter.

The other man cleared his throat, pushed the glasses up his pointy nose. For a second there, Bobby thought that he'd be thick enough to start spouting legal-ease about patient confidentiality and how he couldn't divulge details from the patient's file.

He must've read in Bobby's face just how serious he was, because the next words out of his mouth didn't start with an excuse. "Your nephew had a surgical intervention scheduled for earlier today. He arrived at the hospital through the ER, having been involved in a car crash of some sorts—"

"What?" Bobby asked, looking at Dean's figure again, this time looking for any signs that he might've been injured. As far as he could see, Dean hadn't any new scratch on him. "What kind of crash? Was he hurt?"

The psychiatrist gave him a weak smile. "Your nephew was okay, despite the condition of his car," the man pointed out. "He was brought here only as a precaution."

Bobby didn't know if he should be relieved or scared shitless with that fact. On one hand, it meant that the spell had worked; on the other hand... "You said he had a surgery scheduled?" Bobby asked. "Arranged by whom? To do what?"

Big Bird gave him a look, as if he expected Bobby to know that already. "From what I read in his file, to investigate and determine the viability of removing a tumoral mass lodged in his abdo—"

The change of color in Bobby's face was so sudden and drastic that even the talking man, looking at Dean's file as he was, noticed it. "Sir... are you okay?"

Bobby managed to nod, finally swallowing the knot that had formed in his throat, big enough that it threatened to stop his heart. There were only two reasonable explanations for what that doctor had just said; either Bobby was starting to hear things or... "You got the wrong file, pal. My nephew doesn't have anything of the sorts," Bobby let out, daring the other man to tell him otherwise.

"You weren't aware of your nephew's condition?" the psychiatrist backed away, actually looking surprised. He flipped through another page. "You are listed as his next of kin, so we assumed that you were aware of why Dan was here in the first place..."

Bobby needed to sit down, sooner rather than later, or he feared he might fall down. The doctor's words were jumbling up and making little sense inside his head. All that Bobby could register was that Dean had a very serious condition and that his and Sam's actions had made it impossible for any doctor to help him.

He and Sam might as well have killed Dean.

"I would like to see my nephew now, please," Bobby asked, knowing that his voice was shaking as much as his whole body.

"Before you see him, I would like to stress the fact that we do not believe the events at the OR and the psychotic break are related in any form or context," the man said, sounding slightly defensive. "Your nephew had obvious signs of recent physical abuse and that trauma, more than like, is what set off the psychotic break that lead to his attempted escape from the hospital and the attack on the security guards. And from what few coherent words we could understand, your nephew suffers from hallucinations of quite acute and severe onset, and has shown a detachment from reality that has me very concerned."

"What do you mean?" Bobby found himself asking. Anything to cover the noise that the reverberating words of 'physical trauma' were making inside his head. It sounded like such a clean and antiseptic way to label what Dean had been through.

"Well," the psychiatrist flipped a page on the file that he'd been carrying, "he made some references to demons and giant, bat beasts that he seemed to believe were after him. Also, something he called... hum... hellhounds? Which he seemed convinced that the two security guards were."

Bobby shuddered as he imagined the scene. Dean, wearing nothing but those ridiculously thin hospital gowns, feeling lost and confused, surrounded by all the monsters that were eating up at his soul, beating the crap out of two overweight security guards that probably had little to no training to be guarding anything in the first place.

One thing the psychiatrist had gotten right, though. After the events of the past several days, learning of what had happened in the OR had probably freaked the boy out. Hell! The whole thing was enough to freak Bobby out and he wasn't the one having to deal with being ra- attacked during a hunt, or being stuck in a place with Big Bird over there and the lady from _The Exorcist _next door_. _And a tumor, Bobby reminded himself... how could Dean have hidden something like that from them?

The sound of the door being opened pulled Bobby out of his frantic thoughts. Absentmindedly, the hunter noted that there was no key-code pad or imposing lock keeping that door closed. It was simply a one-way lock, that allowed for anyone to open it from outside, but not from within.

The lights flipped on and the grimness of the room was lit in its full glory. The lack of windows to the outside gave the place more of a prison cell look rather than a hospital room. Even the grey of the walls screamed prison cell.

There were two cots inside, frames bolted to the floor; one of them was empty, loose restraints hanging from its metal frame like broken spaghetti. The other bed, where Dean lay, sat pressed against the far left wall.

Bobby had been prepared for the sore sight of restraints; it had been the first thing that the doctor had warned him about, the first thing he'd seen through the door window. But the sight of Dean conked out on meds, literally drooling over the side of cot where he'd been strapped without so much as a sheet to cover him... that made Bobby see red.

"Isn't this a little overkill?" he asked venomously, not waiting for Big Bird to let him inside and pushing his way past the man.

"I'm sorry, we can't allow visitors too close to the patients in this room... he's still too—" the tall man tried, one hand reaching out for Bobby's arm.

The look that the hunter threw him was enough for the psychiatrist to reconsider.

"As far as I can tell, my nephew was fine the last time I saw him. And now you tell me that your lousy hospital has managed to endanger his life due to poor maintenance of something as important as an OR and that he's had a nervous break down as a consequence of the incompetent work around here. So, tell me again, my nephew's too what exactly?" Bobby said without pause, his voice rising in volume as he took his role of about-to-sue-the-crap-out-of-the-hospital, angry family member as far as he could. Anything that would get him close to Dean right that instant and, even more important, that would get the poor kid out of that place.

The hand on Bobby's arm dropped and the other man backed away, probably now sure that crazy ran in the family. "He broke the jaw of one of our guards and sent the other down a flight of stairs. The man has a concussion as a result. Under the circumstances, the hospital decided to press no charges, but our primary concern here is for your safety, Mr. Singer, and the safety of our patient," the psychiatrist said, sounding almost honest about the crap that was pouring out of his mouth. "I realize that this is a lot to take in and that the whole situation might seem odd and suspicious right now, but I assure you that the hos—"

But Bobby had stopped listening to him as the previously unmoving figure on the bed whimpered faintly.

Dean was covered in sweat, wild eyes looking everywhere but clearly seeing nothing of his surroundings. He looked scared.

Whatever they had given him was good enough to keep him subdued, but not even remotely at rest. The white, restraining band across Dean's chest had made his gown ride up during his struggles, and the vivid bruising that Bobby had seen for the first time the night before, stood in harsh contrast with the rest of Dean's skin.

Trapped in a bed, with that weight pressing down on his chest, Bobby had a pretty good idea what Dean's current nightmares were about. Those damn idiots!

"Dean... it's Bobby," Bobby whispered low enough to make sure that Big Bird wouldn't hear him, trying to call Dean away from the images inside his head.

Two blown up pupils, surrounded by a thin ring of green and a sea of busted blood vessels, looked in the general direction of Bobby's voice. "'oooobeeeee!" Dean called out happily.

The honest joy that shone in the boy's eyes at seeing a familiar face was almost enough for Bobby to embarrass himself into crying like a little girl. Last thing Dean needed was an old man blubbering snot and tears over his drugged-out-off his gorge form. "Hey De- Dan... how're you doing son?"

Dean looked deep in thought, as if evaluating item by item his present condition. He tried raising his hands, probably to count those item, looking surprised when the restrains wouldn't allow him more than a couple of inches above the mattress. "'obee... there'sss somethin' wrong wee t'air here," Dean confided, big eyes looking around for the culprits for such an odd behavior on the atmosphere's part. "Iss too heavee!"

Bobby placed a restraining hand over Dean's struggling arms. There was no point in adding more bruises to the ones already there. "Don't worry... we'll get these off and the air will start behaving just fine again. And then we can get home."

"We cannot remove the restraints until we are sure the patient is no longer a threat to himself or others," the doctor said in a flat tone. Bobby had all but forgotten that the psychiatrist was right there, listening and cataloging each of the words exchanged between the two of them. "It will do him no good to be hearing promises you will not be able to keep."

The look that Bobby shot him, had the world been a fair place, would've liquefied the other man where he stood. But, of course it wouldn't be that simple; of course Bobby would have to either get violent or get coy to have Dean off those horrible chains.

If Dean heard any of the doctor's harsh words, he didn't look like any of them had registered beyond the sound they made. He smiled sweetly, eyes crossing over the bridge of his nose as he tried to focus harder on Bobby's face. As fast and complete as the smile had been, Dean's face turned sad and on the verge of tears in the next second.

"'ant go hom', 'obee," Dean slurred, turning his face away from the older man.

Bobby found himself pushing Dean's soaked hair back from his forehead before he realized what he was doing. "Why's that, boy?" Bobby knew that probing Dean's logic when his brain was so turned into mush from the drugs wasn't fair, but the utter sadness in the young man's face made it impossible to ignore.

Dean shook his head, tears falling free from his lashes were they'd been stubbornly clinging. "I kkkeee... I k'ant, 'obee. Because ifai go there," Dean said, tone proper for a conspiracy to overthrow the throne, "evereeone dies... 'cause of me, 'obee!"

The tears that Bobby had managed to keep at bay before, refused to be denied then.

"It's okay, son... no one's dying on my watch," Bobby said, meaning every word of it.

Dean kept shaking his head, hardly convinced by Bobby's reassurances. "No, no, no... you'll die too, 'obeee... t'fucking batssgonna kill you all!"

Bobby had to limit his reply to a sharp intake of air because Big Bird chose that moment to remind them again that he was still there, that he was still in charge. That he was still hearing. "As you see, the delusions are still active, even in this sedate state. I can't allow his release until we are sure that he is properly diagnosed and responding to treatment. So soon after his initial psychotic break is difficult to venture a gues—"

Bobby wasn't listening to a word the man was saying. He knew what was wrong with Dean's head and there was nothing a doctor - who had none of the facts and wouldn't even believe them if they were told to him - could do for Dean there. Instead, Bobby was trying to process Dean's words.

Sam had told him that they had killed the Popobawa; that Dean had managed to kill it, despite everything. The thing was gone. So why was Dean still fearful for their safety?

The only thing that Bobby could think of were the deaths at the OR. Dean was a smart guy, he would've connected the dots and figured that something like that happening in the same room where he was, would most likely than not, be related to him. They had all stopped believing in coincidences a long time ago.

Dean was blaming the monster for what had happened while he was in the OR; he was blaming himself for the lives that had been lost there. Dean was taking on the guilt that, by all means, belonged to Bobby and Sam. No one else.

"...unless, of course, you wish to transfer him to another psychiatric unit," the psychiatrist went on, his look of disapproval at seeing the older so close to Dean and actually touching him getting on Bobby's nerves, "in which case, I would like to write a letter to my colleague, so that he knows what he'd be dealing with and that proper measures are taken."

Bobby, who had been trying to get Dean to focus on his face, didn't miss the tone in the man's voice. He knew exactly what the 'nice' doctor wanted to tell his colleague. A letter full of how violent Dean was, how deranged his mind was and how they needed to keep him extremely droopy for their own safety.

"How soon until we can do that?" Bobby simply asked. He had no intention of leaving Dean to spend the night there. While the psychiatrist went on venturing a guess on how soon Dean would be safe to move, Bobby was already seeing possible exit points and counting security measures. As far as he could see, security was laughable in that place, the people who worked there obviously counting on the patients being too drugged and trapped in their beds to escape. It wasn't a prison; people wouldn't expect one of the patients to actually have help in breaking out.

The older hunter's eyes went back to the man on the bed. The kid, really. The ancient man without wrinkles. Dean had always been such a contradiction of age, older than he would ever be on the inside, younger than what he actually was on the outside.

Right now, he looked as young as Bobby had ever seen him.

Not even when John had showed up at his doorstep with a toddler and a somber young kid by his hand, had Dean looked so open and vulnerable.

Dean had learned to hide his weakness and frailties from a very young age, some times so effectively that he managed to fool himself along with everybody else.

Not this time, though. Bobby could see the insecurity in Dean's eyes, could see the fear each time he tried to move only to discover all over again that he couldn't.

"I gotta go, kid," Bobby forced himself to say, his throat nearly closing up at the words. It was the last thing he wanted, leaving Dean alone in that place, but he needed to play his part if this thing was going to work at all.

Dean's unfocused eyes looked in his general direction, a loopy smile in his lips. "'kay 'obee... can I go too?"

Bobby gulped. The kid's brain was all messed up, something that Bobby hoped was only due to the drugs and not some side effect of that other reason why Dean had been at the hospital. One minute he wanted to protect them by staying away, the next he wanted the safety and proximity of family. Bobby couldn't really blame him.

"Not right now, kid, but I'm coming back for you soon, okay?" the older man said, his eyes stinging. He grabbed Dean's left hand, the one closest to him, and squeezed it tight.

Dean wasn't much for personal contact, Bobby knew that. Hell! Bobby was as allergic to it as the boy himself. But right then, he needed it; they both needed it.

Dean had to remember at least that Bobby would not leave him there to be preyed upon by the monsters in his memories; and Bobby wanted to reassure himself that the man he saw as a son wouldn't vanish into non-existence, sucked in by all the crap that was surrounding him at this point.

Bobby caught Dean's eyes as he tried to trace a line of recognition from the hand squeezing his and to Bobby's face. "'obee? 's that you?" Dean asked, the same surprise and contentment as if he was seeing him for the very first time. "Getmme out of here, will ya 'obee?"

The older hunter felt like hitting something. Possibly himself.

It was, quite possibly, the hardest thing he'd done in a long time, but Bobby stopped himself from answering Dean's plea as he rose and followed the psychiatrist out of the room. The flicker of the lights, plunging the whole room into darkness, made him feel like he'd lost Dean already.

Even after the doctor closed the door, Bobby could hear Dean screaming out his name, begging to be set free. The only thing keeping Bobby from running back inside that room was the pain in his clenched fists, nails digging half moons into his palms, reminding him to stay focused.

"I'll come by later; arrange for the transference in the mean time," Bobby's gruff voice ordered, not looking Big Bird in the eyes. Bobby didn't want a stranger witnessing how broken he was at leaving Dean like that. "I would appreciated if you had Dean's file and that letter ready when I come back," he said, forcing himself to be polite.

Once the elevator doors closed, hiding from view the psychiatric floor and the remnants of Dean's suffering, Bobby sagged against the wall. Good lord! The hits just kept on coming...

Of course, explaining to Sam why he had left behind a traumatized, drugged out of his gills, Dean would be a second dose of hell. Convincing the young hunter that rushing through that yard and taking Dean by force, while satisfying, was the wrong course of action was going to be an Herculean task. To say the least.

By the time the elevator happily chimed, announcing that he'd reached his destination, Bobby was nowhere near ready to face Sam.

/(O|O)\\

Getting Dean out, as it happened, was surprisingly easy.

Going from the staff schedule that was posted in the nurses' station, Bobby knew that in just two hours there would be a shift change. Lots of people going out, lots of people coming in.

It was the perfect time for him and Sam to slide into one of the laundry rooms, grab themselves a pair of uniforms, and make their way to the psych yard, armed with a wheelchair and all of their resolution to get Dean out.

The one thing that could put a dent in their plan was Dean himself. If he was aware enough to recognize them, his brain addled as it was, Dean would in all likelihood give them away.

Bobby had a gag in his pocket. He wasn't a praying kind of man, but he prayed that he didn't had to use that.

Someone must've been hearing his pleas, because by the time Bobby opened the door to the isolation room, Dean was out like a light, snoring softly. Whatever drugs they had given him finally pulling the kid under.

Bobby looked at Sam; the younger Winchester was biting his lip, looking at the sight of his drugged brother, strapped to the hospital bed. Bobby hadn't mentioned the real reason why Dean had been at the hospital, still hoping that the doctor had somehow gotten it wrong. Still, Sam was having a hard time dealing with what was happening, dealing with the fact that Dean had been put in danger under his watch one more time.

Making short work of the locks on Dean's restraints, Sam took care of sitting Dean on the wheelchair, taking one of the bed sheets to wrap around Dean's upper body and the back of the chair, to make sure that he wouldn't slip off of it. Knowing that Sam would take care of Dean and escape to the car waiting for them in the parking lot, Bobby made his way to the nurses' station.

He'd seen the stack of patient files that was kept there; they needed Dean's file. For one, Bobby wanted to know exactly what was going on with that boy; and they needed to know what sort of drugs they'd pumped him full of.

The nurses where all huddled in a group, exchanging patient information in between those going and those arriving. In the middle of the group, he could see a couple of aids' uniforms as well; Big Bird, fortunately, was nowhere to be seen.

Looking down at his own uniform, reminding himself of which was he, Bobby made his way to one of the nurses. "Excuse me," he said politely, flashing his most honest smile at the young woman. "One of the relatives of the guy in the isolation room claims he's the man's family doctor and he wanted to have a look at the patient file."

Bobby realized that he and Sam would have no problem getting out of there or taking Dean's file with them. When the woman looked up to meet his eyes, all that Bobby saw was a grieving woman, with swollen eyes that did little to hide the fact that the news of what had happened earlier at the OR had hit every one at the hospital hard.

Bobby wasn't even going to dwell on the fact that what had happened, those two deaths, were more than likely his responsibility. He had seen in Sam's face that he was thinking it too.

All they could focus on was getting Dean home.

/(O|O)\\

Sam forced himself to stay in the room with Dean when they got him to Bobby's. Figured it was his penitence for having put his brother at risk again.

Dean and heavy drugs had never been the best of companions, Sam knew that. His brother got loopy on Vicodin, goofy on morphine and he downright hallucinated when coming off anesthetics. It was just the way Dean was rigged.

Psychotropic drugs were a whole new low on how dramatically not-well Dean dealt with drugs. He was sweaty, he was agitated, he was mumbling and screaming for every demon inside his head to leave him alone. By the time Sam and Bobby had him settled in bed, the soft snores had been replaced by agitation. Dean had no idea where he was or who they were.

When Dean's vivid nightmares turned to the events of the past days, Sam felt like bolting from the room. In his rambling mumbles, Dean shared insights about what had happened to him, things that Sam was sure his brother would have never mentioned had he been in full possession of his faculties. Details that Sam thought he wanted to know but, now that he was being given the full graphic descriptions... he had no idea how Dean had survived it all.

At the break of dawn, Dean had finally settled down into a more restful sleep and Sam had allowed himself to leave for a few minutes.

Frustrated and not just a little angry at the world, he headed for the kitchen to find Bobby sitting at the table.

Dean's file, the one they had managed to sneak out of the hospital, was opened in front of him. A bottle of scotch, already half empty, was standing guard over it.

"What the hell did they give him?" Sam asked as soon as he sat down in front of the older man. Before Bobby could answer him, Sam poured himself a hefty dose of alcohol and gulped it down all in one go.

Breakfast of champions, his father would say.

Bobby emptied his glass before he answered. He looked older than his years, haggard and worn. Bobby's face alone scared the hell out of Sam. "Sam, we need to talk."

Sam rubbed his eyes with the palms of his hands. He was too tired for the load of trouble he could hear in Bobby's voice. He fixed his attention on the older man anyway.

"I've been reading through all the stuff that they had on Dean at that hospital," Bobby started. He wasn't going to beat this one around the bush. "Doc that died at the hospital had found a mass in Dean's abdomen... big one, from what they say. She was trying to get it out—"

"—but the ritual we performed made it impossible for them to do anything," Sam finished, his face, devoid of all color as he heard Bobby's words and reached his own conclusions. "Do they even know if it's benign or can-" he whispered, unable to finish the sentence.

"My guess would be neither... I think this is related with what happened to him," Bobby offered, knowing that having more facts would help Sam deal with this. "I've been doing some digging around, and it turns out that these 'masses' were found in a number of Popobawa's victims. Almost all the guys that it attacked."

Sam blinked red eyes in the direction of the other man, his brow furrowed in confusion. "They weren't found in any of the victims at the Cahuillas' camp," Sam pointed out.

"You sure about that?" Bobby insisted, pulling out a stack of papers from inside one of his books. "I had a friend of mine send me all the autopsy reports he could get his hands on in that area... Sam, there were at least three other guys with the same thing."

Sam was about to deny it, to tell Bobby that he had his data wrong, when he remembered that Dean had been the one going to the coroner's office; he had been the one getting those reports and knowing what had been found in the bodies of those poor kids. "He lied to me," Sam concluded.

"Yeah, I figured he did," Bobby agreed. "The reports are very clear about the location of the masses –same exact place as Dean's- but they were never quite capable of knowing what it was exactly or what had caused them. Of course, by then those men were already dead and there was no way to see its evolution."

"What else do those reports say?" Sam asked, picking up the files and skimming through them. All of those men, they had taken their own life. Every one of them attacked by the same thing that had assaulted Dean. "Bobby... what if he... do you think Dean would...?"

Sam couldn't force himself to actually say the words. He knew his brother, knew how Dean valued life, even if he tended to risk his too often. All those other men, Sam wanted to believe that they were all weak, weak enough to see suicide as a way out; Sam wanted to say that Dean would never do something like that, but he knew he was fooling himself on both accounts.

"So what are you saying?" Sam asked after skimming over a couple of reports that ended all up saying the same thing. "That this thing leaves a part of itself behind when it attacks someone?"

Bobby scratched his beard, looking lost at words. "I think it's trying to breed."

Nausea churned in Sam's gut. Soon, the scotch that he'd just downed was burning a trail back toward his mouth. Slapping a hand over his lips, Sam stumbled to the kitchen sink and vomited.

When his stomach finally stopped rebelling, he turned slowly on rubbery legs and stared at the older hunter. Bobby hadn't moved. Hadn't said a thing. Just let Sam get it out of his system. Had probably already done the same himself earlier. Now, the old hunter just sat there, staring at his empty glass. Not making eye contact with him.

When Sam could no longer take the silence, he exploded. "WHAT THE FUCK!"

Bobby rubbed his eyes, apparently not wanting to believe his own words. But the facts were right in front of him and he couldn't _not_ see them for what they were. "We don't know much about these things, but we know they don't kill their victims—"

"No, it just breaks them so deeply that they take their own lives," Sam couldn't help adding.

"I don't it's so cut and dry like that either," Bobby pointed out, pulling another report. "See this big word here?" he said, pointing to a particular word in the medical report that had been underlined several times. "They call it a hormone, but none of the reports seem to know where it came from and why its there... only that it messes with people's brains. Makes them depressed."

Sam wanted to bang his head against the wall until this whole thing made sense to him. All that he could process at the moment was that his brother was fucking _pregnant_ with a monster's baby and that they had made sure that no one could get inside Dean to take it out. "What are you saying, exactly? What does that thing achieve by planting its... eggs inside someone, only to have them kill themselves?" Sam actually gagged saying those words.

"I think it's a natural selection mechanism," Bobby let out, testing the words in his mouth. "We only have reports on those who killed themselves, Sam. Who knows how many others are out there who survived?"

"Those who are compatible with the thing get to be daddies—" Sam said, catching on what Bobby was saying.

"—those who aren't, develop this hormone and end themselves."

"Fucking hell, Bobby!" Sam let out, his fingers threading through his messy hair. He wanted to pull chunks of it out. "What about Dean?"

Bobby sighed. There was no 'better' answer to that question. Dean was screwed either way. "Dean doesn't have the hormone."

"Shit!," Sam yelled out. "Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit!"

"Yeah... something like that," Bobby said. He grabbed the nearly empty bottle and refilled his glass and Sam's. "Congrats... you're gonna be an uncle," he said grimly, raising his glass in a dark and sour salute.

Sam felt like puking all over again.

* * *

Big thank you to Jackfan 2 for her marvelous beta work. All remaining mistakes are mine.


	12. Chapter 11

_What has happened so far:_

_With only a couple of months to spare until Dean's deal with the crossroad's demon comes due, Sam and Dean travel to Nevada, towards the outskirts of the Mojave Desert. Dean goes in search of a fun hunt, a Chupacabra, of all things. Sam's motives run deeper._

_Somewhere in the area, lives an Indian Chief of the Cahuilla tribe, renown for their knowledge in deals with supernatural beings and deities._

_Separated from each other by a sand storm, Dean finds himself attacked by a creature that seems, at first, too cruel and vicious to be anything but a nightmare._

_Driven to drunkenness after a second and just as brutal attack that proves to him that the creature is very much real, Dean demands that they change motels. _

_The following morning, Dean finds new bruising on his wrists and plans on fighting the monster that keeps on attacking him. After some research, Dean dismisses the fact that it might be a Succubus because of the bat-like aspect of the monster. Instead, as he adds night terrors to his search, Dean figures he's facing a Hag, a form of Goblin that attacks people in their sleep by sitting in their chests._

_When Sam leaves to meet with Ahtuapu, the Indian Chief, Dean starts turning the room into a trap for Goblins._

_In the Cahuillas' camp, Sam stumbles across a mourning group and the Chief confesses that he's known Sam was a hunter all along His tribe needs one, and if Sam manages to figure out what is making the young men of his tribe commit suicide, Ahtuapu will help him with Dean's deal._

_Ahtuapu tells Sam about the attacks, how no one ever hears anything, how the victims refuse to tell what has happened to them until the day they kill themselves. Researching older cases, Sam finds out that this isn't the first time it has happen, discovering clusters of young men suicides since 1997 in California._

_Dean visits the coroner that did the autopsy on the latest man who killed himself and is told that all victims had the same hormone in their blood work. He also sees the odd growth of cells that the doctor has pulled out of the latest body._

_The nature of the attacks the victim had suffered and the similarity between his bruises and Dean's makes him think that the same thing that attacked him, attack the Native American boys at the camp._

_Dean finally figures out what the monster is: a mutate Djinn, bent on sodomizing young men until they tell everyone what has been done to them. The African tribe that had first encountered such a thing had called it a Popobawa._

_At the camp, Dean acts as bait to kill the Popobawa and lets Sam believe that they are hunting a Succubus._

_The monster, stronger than him, breaks Dean's right wrist and is about to attack him once again when Sam, who had been sent on a wild goose chase by his brother, finds the two and distracts the Popobawa long enough for Dean to kill it._

_Chief Ahtuapu thanks the Winchesters for their help and gives Sam, as he had promised, the means necessary to break Dean's deal. A powerful spell that will protect Dean from any kind of action that would cause him harm. After it is done, no man, beast or supernatural being can ever break Dean's skin._

_Sam drives Dean to a clinic and forces him to have his wrist checked. While waiting on Dean, Sam remembers Dean's previous comments about an evil 'bat-man' when he was drunk and realizes that the monster that they'd just killed couldn't possibly be a succubus as Dean let him believe. Instead of holy-water and a exorcism, Dean had killed the monster with just a knife._

_Sam figures that Dean knows more than he's letting on and that the only way for him to have that extra knowledge is if Dean himself had been a victim of thing that had been attacking young men at the Indian camp._

_On their way to Bobby's, Sam confronts Dean about his doubts and sends Dean into a brutal flashback that almost kills Dean._

_After making sure that Sam will not divulge his secret to Bobby, Dean escapes to sleep while Sam and Bobby plot to put the spell into action and prevent Dean from being taken by the crossroad's demon._

_Spooked by a nightmare and with the knowledge of what had been found inside the other men attacked by the Popobawa, Dean seeks help in a clinic outside of Bobby's area._

_The doctor who sees him discovers that he has in fact a mass growing near his stomach and strongly advises him to surgery._

_Dean agrees and sets the date for two days from there... exactly at the same time that Bobby and Sam plan to drug him and mark his body so that no external source can ever harm Dean. Including well meant doctors trying to cure him._

_Dean tries to spend the last day before the surgery with Bobby and Sam, but both of them are too busy to spare him the time. Dean ends up drinking alone by the lake._

_By the time he returns home, everything is already set to start the ritual. Sam hands Dean a beer laced with sleeping pills and, once Dean falls asleep, he and Bobby take Dean to the basement._

_The ritual goes as planned and Sam and Bobby are certain it will work._

_Dean wakes up in his bed the following day, but freaks out when he realizes that his cloths have been moved during his sleep._

_He runs away from Bobby's place and ends up crashing the Impala. Luckily for him, he is taken to the same hospital where he was supposed to meet doctor later that day. Dean does suffer a scratch._

_The doctor promises an almost unconscious Dean that she will do anything in her power to get Dean okay, to take out of his stomach what doesn't belong there._

_She doesn't get a chance of doing anything for Dean, as an electrical charge causes an accident at the OR and both she and the anesthesiologist are killed._

_When Dean wakes up and learns of what has happened, he believes that the Popobawa is the one responsible for what happened and escapes the hospital before anyone gets hurt._

_Meanwhile, Bobby forces Sam to tell him the truth once he figures out the name of the thing that attacked Dean. They are both desperately looking for a missing Dean when Bobby gets a call from the hospital about his 'nephew'._

_At the hospital, Bobby and Sam find out that Dean has been transferred to the psychiatric yard. While 'Uncle' Bobby goes to find a drugged and bounded Dean, Sam talks to one of the nurses who were at the OR and finds out that what happened in that room can only be explained as a consequence of the spell he and Bobby performed. _

_Bobby learns that Dean was in a car crash and that he had been expected at the hospital to deal with the mass found in his abdomen._

_After taking Dean from the 'careful' care of doctor Big Bird, Bobby reads through the file that he stole from the hospital and puts his contacts at work._

_It doesn't take him long to figure out what is happening. Dean is carrying the offspring of the Popobawa and, in the absence of the hormone that had caused all the other attacked men to commit suicide and with a spell that actively stops anyone from cutting into Dean to take the monster's baby out, Dean is stuck with letting it grow to completion._

_This is what happens next..._

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\ELEVEN

Sam couldn't look at Dean. Every time he did, he had visions of 'Alien', replacing the toothy sonofabitch for a giant bat, eating its way out of Dean's chest. Fucking movie!

Every time he found himself looking away, Sam forced his eyes to look back at his brother. To actually see him.

Now that he knew what to look for, Sam could actually see the paunch of extra weight around Dean's belly. It made him look like a guy who drank too much beer and didn't exercise enough.

If only reality was that simple.

Dean, for his part, slept on, oblivious to all that was going on around him. Now that the drugs had left his system for the most part, he seemed almost content in his sleep. At peace.

A part of Sam wished Dean could stay like that until this was over. Or at least until they came up with a solution.

They were between the rock and the hard place. Or rather, in between the Hellhounds' teeth and the monster's spawn claws. And no matter how they looked at it, Dean was dead.

If they managed to break the protective spell, something that Sam wasn't even sure was possible, they could get Dean to a doctor and try to remove the monster's offspring from inside his body, but the Hellhounds would still come for Dean in less than five months and drag him to Hell; if they didn't break the spell, the thing that the Popobawa had planted inside Dean would grow to its full size and burst out of Dean like a frigging Alien-wannabe.

And with Dean dead, there was no guarantee that his soul wouldn't end up in Hell either way.

Sam ran his fingers through his hair for what felt like the thousandth time. In the midst of it all, what pissed him off was that Dean had tried to deal with it all on his own.

He had hidden from Sam what had happened to him in the Mojave, going as far as hiding from Sam what they'd been hunting; he had hidden the facts he'd found out while investigating the case and, what was worse, Dean had hidden what was happening to his body from Sam.

If only he had said something...

It was frustrating to no end to know that, had Dean opened his mouth to tell him that he had a life-saving surgical intervention scheduled for the same day Sam was to perform a spell that would make any such interventions impossible, none of this would be happening.

Sam would've waited; would've made sure that everything was okay _inside_ Dean before protecting him from outside threats.

But Dean hadn't said anything, because that was how Dean was; and Sam had done the ritual, because he wanted to protect his big brother.

The irony made Sam want to punch something.

They couldn't even risk taking Dean to a different doctor and trial-and-error their way out of this mess. It was clear that the spell did more than protect Dean from being harmed; it actively attack those doing anything that was perceived as harm. Like holding scalpels in their hands.

"He still sleeping?" Bobby asked, his eyes not lifting from the large book he was currently searching for answers. The gruesome black and white drawing on the top of the page showed a giant spider with its long sting up a woman's—

"Yeah," Sam informed, pulling some other book from the pile Bobby had gathered on top of his table. It was completely out of context and purpose, but the sight reminded Sam of the library tables back at campus, stack full of gravity-defiant piles, waiting for the librarian to come and put them in their rightful place. The ones at Stanford used to hate it when anyone decided to put their book back in a shelf, instead of the tables.

Everything in order and its rightful place. Science books in the scientific section, psychology books in the human sciences. No grey areas, no mixed subject matters.

Why couldn't life be more like that, ordered and with everything in its proper place?

Why did good intentions had to turn into such desolation and heartache?

For all it was worth, the spell that Ahtuapu had given him was everything that Sam could have wished for; it was all that he had needed to keep Dean safe from the Hellhounds' teeth.

But to get it, Sam had taken Dean to a place that had changed him forever; by doing it, Sam had lost Dean.

"Found anything useful?" Sam asked, even though he already knew the answer.

The look on Bobby's face was more than enough answer. "Bubkiss," the older man ended up saying. "Talked to every hunter I know and a couple of them whom I had never heard of and all I could dig up was that these damn things are as rare as cuddly werewolves. The few who actually knew what I was talking about, had either heard it from someone else or read it in a book, but none had ever been close enough to kill one of these things," Bobby complained, leaning back into his chair with a tired sigh. "And Gus, the one guy who claims that he killed one, is in Federal prison, caught with his hands red at the wrong place, in the presence of the wrong corps."

"So, there's nothing we can do for Dean?" Sam asked, even though he couldn't stand to hear the answer.

"For now?" Bobby said, rubbing his beard. "We can let him sleep. And I'm gonna see if someone can get me in contact with somebody that can get me some chat time with Gus Oliver."

/(O|O)\\

_The smell of freshly cut grass was heavy in the air and the breeze that circled around was soft enough to refresh heated skin without stealing any of the warmth of the bright sun above._

_Children's laughter painted the air with sparkling colors, the carefree giggles of pure joy punctuated by the deeper laughs of adults. Some where at a distance, too far to actually see the animal, but still near enough to hear its bark, a dog sounded about as happy as everyone else._

_There was a radio playing somewhere, gentle music notes floating aimlessly, spreading some song about rain and lemons._

_The shaggy haired giant beneath the willow tree could only be Sam, even though he looked nothing like the Sam he remembered._

_Well… he had the same hair, the same height, the same ratty jeans and worn tennis shoes. He even had one of those embarrassing Sam-shirts that no other man would dare to wear._

_The big difference was his face. This Sam looked… happy._

_Light._

_He was holding a big, red ball in his hands. A soft ball. It was easy to track its flight across the green grass as he threw it gently in a little kid's direction._

_The boy couldn't be more than two, shiny light hair bouncing around his head like strings of gold as he eagerly prepared himself to catch the rolling ball with the long bat he was holding. From the effortless way he moved it, the bat could only be made of the same spongy stuff as the ball._

_The little boy giggled uncontrollably when the ball, softly bouncing across the grassy ground, hit the bat in his hands._

_It was more cricket than baseball really, more chance than skill, but Sam beamed a big smile at the kid's accomplishment. To anyone looking, one would think it had been the greatest achievement ever._

_Dean was reluctant to break their fun. Somehow, he was sure that his arrival would be unexpected and do nothing but cause pain and heartache for both Sam and that kid._

_Dean wanted to keep those bright smiles on their faces for a little while longer. He wanted to keep on hearing that child's carefree giggles and feel their happiness as if it was his own._

_Dean wondered who the kid was. Maybe the son of someone they had helped, maybe the son of one of Sam's friends from Stanford._

_The level of confidence and ease between Sam and the little boy, however, spoke of a bond greater than gratitude, deeper than friendship. Every look and touch in between Sam and the kid spoke of family, of blood._

_Dean was sure that he was dreaming. He was dreaming and seeing an imaginary distant future, where Sam got to be happy and have a family of his own, playing in the park with his son like any other regular guy. Because there was no denying that Sam and that boy were related._

_He had never really imagined Sam with kids; he had never imagined either of them with kids, but the sight of Sam playing with what could only be his son, was enough to fill Dean's chest with joy and warmth._

_And then he noticed the kid's jeans. The kid's red jeans._

_The sound of giggles and summer was replaced by a winter of silence. Dean looked up._

_The little boy was looking straight at him, intense green eyes trapping Dean in his gaze._

_Dean wanted to deny it, wanted to wake up, but try as he may, he couldn't stop watching, couldn't escape. When the kid opened his mouth to speak, Dean already knew what he was going to say._

"_Hi, daddy!"_

/(O|O)\\

Dean woke with a start. His breath caught inside his chest and for a couple of terrifying seconds he was sure that the reason why he couldn't pull any air inside was because the Popobawa was back, standing on top of him and about to attack him all over again.

Before Dean could even register where he was and the fact that there was no one else in the dark room but him, he was scrambling from the bed and looking for a place where he could dump the bile climbing up his throat.

He made as far as the floor at the end of the bed. It was mostly just spit that came out, but even so it still burned and left a raw feeling stinging the inside of his throat.

Dean fell on his hands and knees, barely missing the mess he'd just made.

He remembered everything.

Going to the hospital in a flurry of fear for Sam and Bobby's safety, crashing the car to avoid hitting that kid –God! the kid who had just called him 'daddy' in a dream-, waking up after surgery only to find out that he'd guaranteed Sam and Bobby's safety but had ended up killing those people at the hospital.

The weight of guilt was too much.

Dean could remember stealing some clothes from some poor guy in a coma in the room next door; he remembered making it as far as the lobby undetected.

And then... The kid had been there again.

He had reached out his tiny hand, offering to lead Dean into safety. And Dean had freaked out, walked straight into a security guard.

After that, he couldn't remember much.

Just fear and a desperate instinct of fight or flight. He remembered being taken down and strapped to a bed. He remembered not being able to move and feeling trapped, helpless against any attack.

Dean had no idea how he came to be back at Bobby's place. Because he could now tell that that was where he was. It felt like he had never left.

Only...

Surely Sam or Bobby, or both, had been the ones to bring him home. The hospital had probably called Bobby.

Sweat broke out anew on Dean's skin. There was no telling how much the docs at the hospital had told Sam and Bobby; there was no telling how much they already knew.

The only thing that Dean knew for sure was that his reasons for leaving before were the same now, made even worse by the certainty that he was right. He was a danger to those around him. If he stayed there much longer, Sam and Bobby would die too.

And that kid... '_daddy_', he had called him.

Dean's hand moved on its own accord to his stomach. It wasn't possible. There was no way that there was a sentient being growing inside of him. Dean couldn't even think about the possibility. It was the monster, screwing with his mind, Dean was sure of that.

It was the only reasonable possibility.

Either way, it was something that he would have to deal after. After he made sure that Sam and Bobby would be safe.

/(O|O)\\

"Going somewhere, son?"

The question was asked gently, almost casually. Still, it left no doubts that it demanded an answer. Dean shuddered at the sound of that voice.

With a duffel in his hand and his fingers wrapped around the door handle of the back door, there weren't that many excuses and reasons he could make up for what he was about to do.

Dean, however, figured he didn't need an excuse other than the truth. "I gotta get out of here, Bobby", he said without turning back. "Take care of Sam, will'ya?"

When his fingers turned on the knob and the door remained closed, Dean was caught by surprise. Bobby never locked his doors. "T'fuck Bobby?" Dean asked, finally turning to look at the other man. He had a faint recollection of begging the older man to take him from some place, one that Dean hoped wasn't true.

"Didn't think I'd fall for that one twice, did'ya?"

Dean dropped the duffel to the floor, a small cloud of dust spreading from its sides as it landed on the less-than-clean floorboards. "Bobby... you don't understand," Dean tried again. If need be, he would force an exit. But he didn't want an angry Bobby to be the last memory he had of the man.

"Make me understand," Bobby asked.

Dean ran a hand through his hair. It was getting long again but for the life of him, Dean couldn't figure when he would find the will to deal with such a mundane thing such as trimming his hair. "Every second that I spend here, I'm putting you and Sam and risk," Dean confessed.

"What the hell are you talking about?"

Dean had to blink to bring himself back to here and now. For a couple of seconds he had forgotten that, for Bobby, the most fucked up thing in his life was a deal with a demon that was about to come due. "The Hellhounds, Bobby," Dean lied, "I can hear them... all the tim—"

"That's bull!" Bobby called out. His face, however, softened as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

Dean flinched at the swift change more than he did for the harsh tone. It had been brief and cut short, but enough for Dean to understand what it meant.

There was only one reason why Bobby would be treating him like he feared that Dean might break if he yelled at him. There was only one possible explanation for Bobby to be looking at him like he's broken already. Like Dean's a fucking victim...

"You know," Dean whispered, all strength failing him, unable even to keep a steady voice. "You fucking know...

Before Bobby could open his mouth to offer any kind of reassurance or denial, he found himself facing the barrel of Dean's gun. "Dean?"

"The keys, Bobby," Dean simply said. He wanted to tell himself that he wasn't running from Bobby's reaction to what had happened to him; Dean wanted to believe that he was only running to make sure that Bobby and Sam would be safe. The fact was, he was getting out of that place, whether Bobby wanted it or not. "Now! Or I'm blowing this damn door open!"

Bobby let drop what little was left of the pretense he'd been maintaining for Dean's sake, his eyes honest about the fact that he was aware of everything. "You don't have to be alone on this."

Search as he may for disappointment or disgust in the older man's face, Dean could only find understanding there.

How could Bobby understand any of what had happened? How could he even try?

Bobby moving forward startled Dean out of his thoughts. "Stop!"

Bobby gave him a look below the rim of his cap. "Or what? Ya'gonna shoot me?" the older man offered, defiant. They both knew well enough that Dean wouldn't press that trigger. "The Popobawa is dead, Dean," Bobby added, his voice gentler. "It's not coming back."

Dean resisted the urge to drop the gun and stick two fingers inside his ears, stop all of those grating words from being heard.

Bobby knew!

Sam had opened his goddamn mouth and told the other man everything despite what Dean had asked him.

Dean's legs were shaking. He stiffened his knees to keep Bobby from seeing that too. One more sign of how weak Dean was.

He closed his eyes briefly. In those two seconds of darkness Dean could imagine the whole conversation between Sam and Bobby, he could see the disgust in Bobby eyes as he heard of Dean's shame. Of how weak Dean had been to allow something like that to happen to him.

Despite himself, Dean felt his cheeks growing hot, red flush climbing all the way from his chest to the tip of his ears. Bobby knew that Dean had become some monster's bitch…

There was no way that something like that would have ever happened to either Sam or Bobby.

Sam would've probably been able to fight it off using his mind thing or by sheer force of his resolve.

And Bobby… Bobby would've probably figure out what the thing was after one whiff of its foul smell and killed it before anything could happen.

There probably even was some obscure text explaining specifically how that monster only preyed on the weak and dumb.

Despite being dumb and weak, however, Dean knew something that neither Bobby nor Sam were aware.

"You're wrong," Dean informed Bobby. "It's still around. It's been killing everyone around me. It killed two people at the hospital and I won't let that happen to y—"

"It's my fault those people died, Dean," Sam's voice cut in. He was standing by the doorway that led to the study, hair standing on end and with the bleary eyes of one who had just woke up.

The last thing that Dean wanted was to be talking to Sam right now. The only word that came to his mind as he looked at his brother's sleepy face was 'traitor' and he wanted to shout it out over and over again until Sam's ears were bleeding. How could Sam have looked him in the eye, tears welling up as he promised –as he fucking promised- that he would keep his mouth shut?

But Sam's confession was just too absurd for Dean to keep his silence. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Sam took one step closer, a frown burrowing deep into his forehead, as he searched for the best way to answer. "Just... lower that gun and we'll tell you everything."

With a deep foreboding feeling at the pit of his stomach, Dean lowered the weapon. And Sam and Bobby told him everything about the spell they'd made and the information they had dug up on the Popobawa's victims.

/(O|O)\\

Dean kept looking at his skin like he was expecting to see the sigils engraved there.

"Dean," Sam tried again. Dean had been staring at the underside of his wrists for what felt like forever and hadn't said a word. "Say something, man."

Sam had expected anger; he had expected shouting and name-calling. He had hoped for some externalization in the form of at least a punch. The silence and the motionlessness were terrifying him. "Dean... you okay?"

Dean did look up at him then. It was a stupid question, for sure, but Dean was still standing by the back door of Bobby's house, with a duffel at his feet and a loaded gun, forgotten in his hand.

"You believe this thing I have inside of me is another one of those..." Dean finally said, his voice raspy and soft. "You think it's a Popobawa junior?"

Bobby looked at Sam, both knowing the answer to that question but unwilling to voice it. Dean hadn't reacted at all to the fact that Sam had betrayed his trust, that both Bobby and Sam had went around his back to do that spell...

They feared that telling Dean with all the letters that he was carrying a monster inside his belly would be the final straw.

"We don't know that for sure, Dean," Bobby said. "We're still trying to find anyone who has survived this... we need some hard evidence facts before going around making any rash decision—"

"And because of this ritual you made, if anyone else tries to cut it out again, the same thing that happened at the hospital will happen again."

Dean wasn't asking. He was cataloguing the facts, lining them up for some reason that was only clear to Dean.

"Eventually this thing will grow to its full length and try to claw its way out," Dean went on, his voice growing more and more detached. "Is that about it?"

Sam and Dean had watched the Alien movies time and time again, whenever they were on TV and the motel they were staying allowed for that. Sam knew exactly what image was going on inside Dean's head. It was the same one that he kept imagining inside his own head. It was horrifying to envision it anywhere outside movie-land.

"We'll find a solution before it comes to that," Sam promised. He wouldn't allow that to happen to his brother. He had just found a way to keep Dean out of Hell... he was not letting him die in such a gruesome way. He was not letting Dean die, period.

"I have a solution for it," Dean whispered. "Right now."

Time stopped for Sam, because he knew his brother; he knew exactly what Dean was about to do. In the same fraction of a second, Sam saw the lines of the glowing sigils disappearing into Dean's skin as the spell was finished; he saw the sobbing nurse and her story of how she couldn't get a needle into Dean's skin until he had grabbed her hand. He saw Dean pull the gun up and press it beneath his chin.

Bobby, as far as Sam could see, had yet to make the same connection. There was no way he could have, not without having heard what the nurse had told Sam.

The older man looked shocked, yes, but he didn't seem the least bit concerned that when – if - Dean pulled that trigger, anything would happen.

After all, part of the reason why they were in this predicament in the first place was because nothing could harm Dean.

Nothing, except himself.

Sam threw himself at Dean a split second before the deafening sound of a gun being shot exploded in the small lobby.

At a distance, Sam could hear what he was sure to be Bobby yelling at them. It was hard to understand anything over the ringing in his ears. It was hard to figure out anything outside the fact that Dean had just tried to kill himself.

Sam opened his eyes. The gun had landed a couple of inches away from his face, smoke still coming out of its barrel. Beneath him, Sam could feel the rapid rise and fall of Dean's chest.

"Getoffme!" Dean all but snarled, hands pushing against Sam's shoulders. "Get the fuck off of me!"

Realizing where he was and how Dean would react to that, Sam scrambled backwards, nearly sending Bobby crashing down as he bumped into the older man's legs.

Sam's hands slipped on the floor and he looked at his palm. There was a red smudge on his fingers. Blood.

Sam studied his brother's hunched figure with desperate eyes, trying to find the source of the blood. He found it in Dean face, where the bullet had nicked his chin. Dean hadn't even noticed it yet.

He was pressed against the wall, legs drawn tightly against his chest, shaking all over and looking daggers in their direction.

He looked so much like a frightened animal that Sam's heart twisted painfully inside his chest.

"How did you know?" Bobby whispered. Sam figured the older man was just as much in shock as the rest of them. "Jesus... how did you know?"

Bobby's skin was pale and damp. He'd lost his cap somewhere in between standing by the stairs and rushing to Dean and Sam's side. His thin, graying hair was standing at attention, like he'd been electric-shocked within an inch of his life.

Still, despite the scare, Sam was glad to see that the fallen gun was now in the hunter's hand and out of Dean's reach.

Sam didn't have an answer for Bobby. But looking at the blood on Dean's chin, Sam knew how close they'd come to losing him. He finally understood how far they had pushed his brother. How everything was spiraling out of Dean's control. "I'm sorry, Dean... I'm so sorry..."

Dean's eyes turned, focusing on Sam's face, instead of burning holes in Sam's shirt. Sam could hear Dean's teeth, gnawing inside his mouth, he could see Dean's jaw, clenching and tensing as he chewed on his anger and frustration.

And Sam knew that Dean had every right to be angry. He had every right to feel betrayed and pissed. But he did not have the right to give up. Sam wouldn't give him_ that_ right.

"Dean... please," Sam went on. He could feel Bobby at his back, hand on his shoulder keeping him from getting any closer. He let the older man push him back, give Dean some space to deal with what was happening.

"Get the med kit," Bobby said, his voice somewhat back to normal, back in control.

Sam had no idea how the hunter did it, but when he returned with the bag filled with bandages, Bobby had coached Dean off the floor and into the bathroom. The older man was speaking softly, words for Dean's ears alone.

And Dean was crying. Softly. Silently.

Sam handed the bag to Bobby and went to find a dark place to do the same.

/(O|O)\\

Time moved slowly.

Or maybe it was the fact that every new day was so much similar to the day before that made it look that way.

Bobby searched for other hunters who might have come across this monster, searched for anything he could find on the Popobawa. As far as he could tell, the only two surviving hunters to have ever laid eyes on the thing were Gus Oliver, who seemed to have dropped out of the face of the Earth, and Dean.

Sam searched for every means of getting around the spell that he could think of, any way of taking that thing from inside Dean's body. He had started by the conventional stuff that would destroy those cells – radiotherapy, chemotherapy, proton therapy, radiation – but he soon gave up on those. Every single one of them implied involving specialized civilians, trained professionals to administer those treatments... and Dean would never consent to put anyone else at risk.

Dean spent his days upstairs, closed in one of rooms that Bobby used as storage for all the crap he'd gathered through the years.

At first, neither man wanted to risk taking his eyes off Dean, fearing that he might escape, that he might try to use that gun again.

But Dean did neither. In fact, Dean didn't do much of anything.

He slept when exhaustion overtook him; he ate when Sam bullied him into eating something; he bathed when Bobby pushed a bowl of warm water into the room where he was.

And then Bobby would go back to his research, Sam would go back to searching impossible ways to take a piece out of Dean that didn't belonged there, and Dean would go back to being a ghost amongst the living.

/(O|O)\\

Sam didn't knew much about cars, but with a mechanic for a father and a brother who spend most his free time tinkering with every mechanical thing that he could get his hands on, Sam had picked up a few things along the way.

Dean wouldn't let him near him, refused to listen to every apology or offer of help that Sam tried to voice. Doing nothing was slowly driving Sam insane.

So, he turned his efforts towards the Impala instead.

Bobby had managed to find where the car had been towed after the crash and had taken it back to his salvage yard. It wasn't nearly as bad as the time when that semi-truck had t-boned them, but the driver's side was scrapped to hell and bent out of shape. The undercarriage was a messed too, torn metal ripped open when Dean had hit the curb.

Sam figured it was an easy enough job for him to take on.

His routine changed after that. He would wake up early, bully Dean into some breakfast, help Bobby with whatever needed done around the yard until it was time to bully Dean into eating some lunch. Then Sam went to work on the Impala until well after the sun went down.

After that he would spend most of the night pouring over obscure texts, trying to find a way around that spell. And do it all over again when the sun raised the next day.

The flipping of heavy pages and the clunking of hammer on metal became the two constants in Bobby's place.

"He's killing himself, ya know that, don't you?" Bobby said, breaking the unspoken rule of 'no talking' when he pushed the bowl of water near Dean. "He keeps his nose on those books late into the night, then he's up at the crack of dawn and working on that car of yours until the sun sets. I don't even think he sleeps at all."

The car still didn't looked any better than when it'd been first towed in but Sam was looking more and more haggard with each passing day, as if the dents and scrapes on the Impala were some contagious disease that Sam was slowly contracting.

Four weeks of washing up cat-style and scarcely eating had done no favors for Dean either. There was a beard growing mismatched on his face and no matter how much he pretended to use the water and soap that Bobby gave him, Dean still smelled.

He had lost weight too, legs and arms growing thinner as his belly grew bigger. He looked like one of those poor, starved kids in Ethiopia.

And Bobby had had enough of watching two Winchesters slowly killing themselves under his roof.

At the sound of Bobby's voice, Dean looked in his direction, which was more than he did on most days. He knew Bobby was talking about Sam because the next place he looked was outside. It was the middle of the afternoon, which meant that Sam still had a good couple of hours ahead to work on the Impala.

"I didn't ask for any of this," Dean said, his voice hoarse and cracking. Bobby couldn't remember when it had been the last time that Dean had said more than one word or even a grunt..

Bobby knew that the boy was talking about more than the spell, more than Bobby's research, more than Sam's devotion to that car like it was Dean himself he was trying to fix.

Somehow, Bobby knew that Dean was talking about everything that had happened in the last month.

"I know you didn't, son," Bobby agreed. "But that doesn't make it any less real... nor does it mean that it's anyone's fault that you got attacked, Dean."

This was usually the spot where Dean would kick him and Sam out of the room.

Today, however, he just kept on looking outside, watching Sam hammer away. It was much harder than before for Bobby to get an inkling of what was going on inside that boy's head.

Bobby figured he had more chances of finding an oil well in his backyard spitting the stuff already inside a labeled can than working out what was going on inside Dean Winchester's head.

Bobby, like Sam, still wasn't sure how much of what was happening Dean actually blamed on them. It was the spell that they'd done that was keeping him trapped, stuck with that thing growing inside of him. There was no denying that.

But Bobby also knew Dean well enough to know that he understood why Sam hadn't been able to tell him what he was up to. As it was, they'd taken a risk by telling Dean everything before the deal's date was due.

But Sam hadn't dropped dead. And Dean was still safe from any Hellhounds that tried to come and collect that debt. Unless he killed himself first or that monster thing decided to climb out of his belly, he would never have to see a Hellhound in his life.

"Sam blames himself for it all, you know that, right?" Bobby went on, taking advantage of Dean's apparent willingness to hear him out. "Do you blame us too?"

Dean's brow furrowed at that. "That's stupid," he said, more conviction in his voice than he'd managed for the past few weeks. "The only thing he's guilty of is being unable to keep his mouth shut."

"He didn't have to tell me anything, son," Bobby voiced, looking at the floor. Dean's wrist was already cast-free and all evidence of the physical abuse that his body had suffered was long gone, but Bobby could still see those bruises all over his body as if they still were in that candle-lit basement. "When I saw the bruises, I figured it out... he didn't have to say a thing."

When Bobby looked up again, Dean was scratching his stomach. Over and over again, nails that were getting too long scraping compulsively over the bulge that was getting harder and harder to overlook.

He'd taken to doing that lately, Bobby had noticed. Like he was trying to scratch the swelling away.

It was also, usually, Bobby's cue to stop talking about the Popobawa's attack. Or just plainly stop talking.

"I finally got in touch with Gus," Bobby said instead. "Gus Oliver, a fellow hunter who went up against one of these _things_ before," he clarified, seeing Dean's confused look. "He told me about the hunt."

They'd stopped saying the name of the monster the day after Dean tried to blow his brains out. It wasn't something that either Bobby or Sam had planned out –what to say or not in front of Dean- but the fact was that both had started referring to the Popobawa as 'the thing'.

Dean kept on scratching, kept on staring outside. Bobby knew that he should stop talking and leave the kid alone, but they'd tried that and it really wasn't working.

"He walked in on the thing attacking his nephew," Bobby said straight-out, watching carefully as Dean's movements turned more frantic, like he was humming with high voltage electricity and ready to short-circuit. "He told me that he was so stricken with what he was seeing that he couldn't even react... he just froze and watch that monster defile his sixteen year old nephew—"

"Stop!" Dean yelled, his fist flying off to hit the wall right next to Bobby's face. The older man wasn't exactly sure if he'd been aiming for the wall all along or had just missed his target. "It wasn't his fault! It... paralyzes you, makes it impossible to move a single muscle," Dean said through clenched teeth. "It wasn't his fault."

"Only the vic—" Bobby stopped himself in time. The word 'victim' was up there with Popobawa. No one said it around Dean. "It paralyzes those it attacks... the thing hadn't even noticed that Gus was watching. He just froze out of pure fear."

"Happens to the best," Dean deadpanned, turning his head back to Sam's hammering. There was a scraping sound quickly followed by a long string of curses and the hammer hitting the ground in a puff of dust.

"Didn't happen to you," Bobby offered after a beat.

Dean looked actually surprised at hearing those words. His eyes, which had taken a dull and flat color, surged to life in anger. "It attacked me four times, Bobby! FOUR! How is that not freezing like a damn lily and getting fu—"

Bobby's heart was hammering against his chest, faster than Sam's hammer in the yard. His voice, however, was steady as he replied. "From what I understand, the second you were out of the damn thing's influence, you killed that nasty piece of work. How is that freezing? How is that not being a good hunter?"

Dean's anger deflated, as if he had forgotten who had killed the monster.

"You don't get to choose the beginning as the most important part of the story; that's what endings are for," Bobby went on, satisfied to see the conflicting emotions in Dean's face. As long as he was conflicted, he wasn't thinking himself as a weak man or a bad hunter. "What matters here, Dean, is that you won... in the end."

The dry chuckle that left Dean's throat was a scary thing, like a grizzly bear coughing. He gave a pat to his swollen middle. "Yeah, Bobby... I feel like such a winner over here."

Bobby let his head drop, pulling off his cap to scrub his hair. His brain hurt. "We're working on that... you gotta trust me and Sam; we'll find a solution."

Dean stood silent, looking back outside. Sam was nowhere to be seen, probably inside the house, venting his frustration at the irreparable car.

Dean's eyes, however, were fixed on a point beyond the Impala. If Bobby didn't know better, he would say that Dean was staring at the old tree where a flat tire still hung, leftover playground from when the Winchesters were nothing but little squirts.

"Clean up," Bobby said, sensing that that talk was over. "You look like a damn caveman."

"Bobby," Dean's soft voice, barely registered as a sound, caught him before he could close the door. "There was a third one."

Bobby's eyes narrowed. "Come again?"

"There was a third hunter who went up against... one of those things," Dean clarified. "I never learned his name, but he was talking about it, in the Road House. It was because of what he said that I realized that this was a mutated Djinn."

Bobby came closer. "And he killed the thing?"

Dean nodded. "At least he said he did. He was bragging about it, actually."

"What did he look like?"

Dean's brows furrowed. It had been over a year ago, a side conversation that he hadn't really been paying his full attention— "Normal guy. About my age, dark hair... I think he walked with a limp. Not sure if it was from a recent injury or... I don't know."

Between Ellen and Jo, they knew just about every hunter that stepped foot inside the Road House more than once. If this guy was bragging, he was doing it to his friends, and if he had friends in the Road House, he was a regular.

"I'll ask Ellen, don't worry," Bobby said with a smile. He looked back at Dean, hoping to see some satisfaction reflected there, but the boy was back to staring at that flat tire, swinging aimlessly in the wind.

/(O|O)\\

Dean waited until he could hear Bobby's footsteps walking down the stairs to wave back.

Little red jeans clad legs swung back and forth, snugly dangling from the flat tire, the little kid beamed him a happy smile at finally being acknowledged.

Dean left him happily swinging outside and picked up his shaving kit.

TBC

AN: This story is now complete. There is one more chapter to go (which is already in the beta-reading stage) and a short epilogue. If all goes well, the rest should be up and available by this coming weekend!

Many thanks to Amber1960, who graciously and artfully took over beta-reader duties in this final stage. Any remaining mistakes are, of course, my doing.


	13. Chapter 12

**THE DARKEST SIDE OF BLACK**

CHAPTER /(O|O)\\TWELVE

"You're doing it wrong."

Sam physically jumped in the air upon hearing those words, mainly because the voice belonged to the last person he was expecting to see out there in the car yard. He slid out from under the car, the sun in his face preventing him from seeing the expression on Dean's face.

"What makes you say that?" he asked, casually, taking his cue from Dean.

"Because you've already put in the suspension but left half of the struts out," Dean pointed out, leaning down to take a peek at the Impala's underside. "Also… the exhaust is backwards."

Sam blinked, still trying to link words to car parts. "Shit!" he finally said, getting up to his feet and throwing the oil-greased rag hanging from his back pocket, on the floor. "You're not pulling my leg, right? I mean, I looked it up online and they seemed sure that this was the proper way to get it done—"

The hopeful look on Sam's oil-smeared face was enough to make Dean laugh. "Dude… online auto shop?"

Sam couldn't help but join Dean's laughter, even if the reason was to mock his poor mechanic skills. It was a sound that he was sure he would never hear again.

"Here, gimme that," Dean said, hand waiting for the wrench that Sam was holding. "Before you maim my baby any further," he said, taking Sam's position and sliding under the car with practiced ease.

Sam just stood there, not really sure on what to do with himself.

Since the day that he had woken up to Dean and Bobby's angry shouts by the house's back door and Dean hadn't died because Sam was a second faster and that bullet was an inch lower, Dean hadn't really been talking to him.

Sam hadn't taken it personally. After all, Dean hadn't been talking much, period.

But this sudden turn about, this brisk come back to the way things were before anything had happened, seemed just too good to be true.

"You gonna stand there all day or are you gonna come down here and learn the proper way to put an exhaust in?" Dean's voice reached him from under the car.

Sam stared dumbly at Dean's legs, sticking out from under the car like they belonged there.

It would be so easy to believe that everything was alright...

"Didn't figure you'd trust me to touch the insides of your car ever again," Sam offered as he slid back under the car, side by side with his brother. When their shoulders brushed, Sam was the one flinching this time around, afraid of Dean's reaction.

Dean turned his head to look at him, his face close enough and open enough for Sam to really see inside his brother for the first time in over a month. For the first time since every nasty and dark truth had come into light.

"Not gonna be around forever, Sammy," Dean said with a serene smile that didn't reach his eyes. "It's about time you learned this stuff."

Suddenly, there was a lump inside Sam's throat and, swallow hard as he might, he couldn't seem to dislodge it.

Nothing had really changed, Sam could understand that now. Dean had just moved on from being angry at what had happened to accept that it was all over for him.

"Don't say shit like that," Sam let out, not really caring how emotional and broken his voice sounded. "We'll fix this."

The look that Dean gave him then stole the breath from Sam's lungs. There was such a deep sorrow, such a profound sadness and dejection inside those eyes that not even the gloom of the underside of the Impala could hide it.

Dean was not okay. And what was worse, he had absolutely no faith that either Bobby or Sam could do anything to make things better.

"Of course we can fix this," Dean said, his eyes turning away and his attention back on the car, "it's just an exhaust."

"Not talking about the damn car, Dean," Sam protested. "Bobby's looking for that hunter you told him about, the one from Ellen's bar, and I'm sure that I'll find a way around—"

"You're doing it wrong," Dean said again, stopping Sam's tirade before he could go any further.

Sam looked between his brother and his hands, confused at Dean's words. He wasn't doing anything. Dean was the one tinkering with the car now. "I'm not doing anything."

"You're trying to make things better," Dean clarified, intently looking at the wrench twisting at the turn of his fingers. "You're trying to make sure there is a future for me."

"Damn right I am!"

"Then you're doing it wrong," Dean said again. "It's not the future that concerns me... it's the past that I want to change."

"Dean..." Sam whispered, words failing him as he realized what Dean was saying.

"I wish I had a big eraser, you know Sam?" Dean went on, not really acknowledging Sam's presence other than saying his name. He might as well be talking to himself. "I just wish I had a big fucking eraser and just delete everything... get rid of it all."

Sam looked away. He didn't want to see if the pain he could hear in Dean's voice matched the wetness he could see shinning in his brother's eyes. He didn't want Dean seeing the tears in his eyes either.

Try as he may to put himself in Dean's shoes, Sam knew he could never truly understand what was going on inside his brother's head. Sam couldn't understand Dean's casual way of dealing with his own future, couldn't see how Dean could just not care about what happened next.

Sam couldn't change what had happened, not the way Dean wished. But Sam _could_ do something about Dean's future, and he had promised himself that he wouldn't rest until he was sure that Dean had one.

/(O|O)\\

Nelson Wyse was the name of the hunter that they were looking for. Or at least that was what Ellen had promised Bobby, in exchange for convincing those boys to drop by and pay her a visit.

Nelson Wyse was, like most hunters, full of shit. Over the phone he'd confessed to Bobby that the hunt hadn't actually been in Africa, it had been in Yuma, Arizona. It was just the victims who had been African emigrants, recently arrivals to the USA at the time, almost ten years ago.

So, he hadn't saved 'a whole village'... but he had killed a Popobawa.

Bobby suffered through all the re-tale of how Nelson had killed the bat-like monster and saved the last guy it had attacked. What Bobby really wanted to hear, was the name of the survivor. Abasi Jirani.

The joy at finally having a lead was short lived.

Abasi was dead. That was the first thing that Sam found out when he made a search for the name.

But he hadn't killed himself, nor had he died shortly after being attacked. As luck had it, the man had died two months ago.

"One tiny break!" Sam yelled out. "That's all I'm asking... one fucking tiny break!"

"S'not the man's fault that he got shot, Sam," Bobby said, even though both were aware that Sam's frustration wasn't at Abasi's untimely death but at fate.

Sam scrunched his eyes, going back to the computer. "_Why_ did he get shot?" he mumbled to himself, hearing the scratching of the chair's legs against the wooden floor as Bobby got up to join him.

"What do you mean?"

"Abasi was a regular guy," Sam went on, his fingers never stopping on the keyboard. "Paid his mortgage on time, his neighbors never complained about him, showed up on time for work everyday, didn't argue with anyone... the man didn't even had a traffic ticket—"

"So why did he end up eating lead?"

"Exactly," Sam voiced, his face closing after that as he read on. Maybe there was one person Abasi had pissed off. "Apparently, he was shot by his own son."

Bobby shrugged. "Yours ain't the only messed up family out there, Sam," he said, eyes squinting, trying to read the fine print beneath the photo of Abasi that Sam had on screen.

"That's not even the fucked up part," Sam said somberly. "The kid's eight years old."

Bobby whistled, eyes wide as he processed Sam's words. "That can't be right."

"They got the kid locked up in a detention center, going through psych evaluation," Sam read on, making note of the center's address. "It's only a couple of hours away."

"You wanna go talk to this kid?"

"Can't talk with the father... maybe the kid remembers something that can helps us," Sam offered with a shrug.

"You gonna tell Dean about this?"

Sam bit the tip of the ballpoint pen in his hand. Dean had struck a fine balance in between the deep depression into which he'd sunk after the whole truth came out, and the sort of numbed, shocked way he'd been, before they got to Bobby's place.

Bobby had a point. Telling Dean about this one in a million shot might throw him back; but then again, nothing good had ever come out of them hiding things from each other. The situation they were in now was more than enough proof of just that.

"The car's fixed," Sam said, looking at the wall as if he could see the Impala, back into riding condition thanks to Dean's handiwork. "Dean can decide if he wants to go on a road trip."

"Nothing to decide," Dean's voice said from the kitchen, a half eaten peanut butter and cheese sandwich in hand. From the look of it, Dean had been there for a long time. Time enough to hear everything. "This kid's dad, for all I know, was the one putting the thing that attacked those men, that attacked... me—into to this world," Dean said, anger seeping into his voice. "I wanna know why. I wanna know how."

The idea hadn't really crossed Sam or Bobby's mind, but Dean was right. There were only so many of these monsters, few enough that they had hardly heard of them before. This guy had been attacked close to nine years ago, which was plenty of time for the monster to mature and go on his merry way of attacking others.

Maybe it was a good thing that Abasi was already dead.

"Besides, you two suck at dealing with kids," Dean let out, his mouth stuffed with the remains of his sandwich.

Sam smiled. It felt almost like the old days. "Murderer-child, Dean... don't forget that part."

/(O|O)\\

The kid was beautiful.

There was no other way to put it. He had a cherubic little face that made old ladies want to squeeze his cheeks and big, brown eyes speckled with gold that would melt a lot of hearts when he was older.

Currently, however, the kid wasn't doing much in the way of conquering hearts or winning over old ladies.

Pretending to be from an outsourced company hired by Child Protection Service to investigate the case of Peter Simon, Sam and Dean hadn't had much trouble getting in to see the kid.

Opening his file and reading the first lines was enough to understand why the child and the murdered father hadn't shared a last name.

"So you were staying with a foster family, is that right, Peter?" Sam asked. Even seated from across the table, Sam still looked impossibly large in the presence of the small kid.

"You have girly hair," the kid offered in return, a smirk in his lips. "Your turn to say something obvious."

Sam exchanged a glance with Dean. This was why he'd always preferred Dean to take the lead when dealing with kids. They were hardly ever cooperative, and Sam didn't know enough kid-logic to reason with them. Dean, somehow, seemed to know how to speak their language.

"Why did you kill your father, Peter?" Dean cut in, not bothering to sugar coat it or try to win the kid over.

It was so unlike Dean that Sam pondered how wise it had been to bring his brother along for this. The kid was probably traumatized by the experience, probably didn't even knew what he'd been doing—

"Don't call that prick my father... like your girly partner said, I was in foster care," the kid spat out. "I have no parents."

The cherubic face had hardened to a mask of cold, anger and world-weariness. To see it in such a young child was more disturbing than Dean's lack of sympathy.

"And yet, you vented a guy that tests proved to be your biological father," Dean pointed out. "How does that happen?"

"How does a mother dump her kid in a dumpster inside a plastic bag, just hours after he is born?" the kid threw back, the slightly dampness in his eyes suggesting that he wasn't merely casting random queries. "How does a father fail at lifting one finger to stop something like that from happening? How do Social Services ignore when a kid shows up, day after day, with new bruises?"

Sam saw Dean's own anger waning away at each of the kid's angry words. The threat of Social Service and foster care had been a constant menace, hanging over their heads, until the day Dean turned eighteen. And no matter how well the system worked, all it took was one bad situation, one kid with a fucked up life, to turn it all into one ugly monster.

"Why did you shoot him?" Dean asked again, softer this time. He was looking right at the little boy's eyes, probably closer and with more attention than anyone had ever paid in that child's whole life.

"He called me a monster," Peter said, small hands curling over each other on the tabletop. Wriggling some imaginary neck. "I wanted to know the name of the bitch who had dumped me with the rest of the garbage, and the son of a bitch had the balls to say that_ I_ was the monster! That I was an 'abomination'," he said with a snark, clearly far from impressed with the word.

Sam sat up straighter at hearing that. Maybe it had been just an unfortunate choice of words, maybe it was the kid's own recollection of what Abasi had actually said... "Do you know why he called you that?" Sam couldn't help but cut in to ask.

The kid gave him a look before rolling his eyes. "T'fuck should I know? The guy was off his meds, scared shitless of me as soon as I told the mother fucker who I was... and that was even before I pulled the gun," he added with a smile that turned Sam's stomach. "After Mr. Sevenrounds made its appearance, he started jabbering about all sorts of things."

"Do you remember exactly what he said?" Dean asked.

Sam looked at his brother rather than the kid. Dean's voice was stressed and he kept stealing looks at the empty seat beside Peter. His hands were under the table, hidden from the kid, but Sam, seating next to him, could see them just fine. Dean's knuckles were white as chalk.

"Popo... Popo bauhua, or something" the kid said without hesitation. "I figured that's the bitch's name, so I memorized it pretty good."

"What for?" Sam rasped.

"Because she's next."

/(O|O)\\

Dean could barely focus what Peter was saying. Not since the other kid had joined the party.

The kid from his visions.

The one who called him 'daddy' like was entitled to use that word.

Dean couldn't help but to equate the two of them, sitting side by side. The two links he had to Popobawa's offspring.

Sam clearly couldn't see him, that much was clear for Dean. His brother kept on sending worried looks his way, kept on looking with sorrow at Peter. Never once did he look at the other kid, the one softly crying beside Peter.

The one in Dean's head.

Dean couldn't help but try to imagine how it would be like, to find himself with a baby in his hands, a child originated by a monster, a child fruit of... rape, and not react like Abasi had clearly reacted.

In fear.

In disgust.

Not giving that new life a chance to prove itself worthy of living, to prove itself different from its origins.

Dean knew that the imaginary child beside Peter was crying because he feared his future would become the same.

/(O|O)\\

"You heard what the kid said!"

"Dean... there is no way that kid can be the result of the Popobawa's attack," Sam reasoned, biting his lip when he saw the color leaching from Dean's face as he talked so casually about the monster. "It's simple genetics."

"His own father called him a monster," Dean insisted. "Popobawa, that's what he called the kid. You were there, you heard it too!"

Bobby sighed. They had been at it for some time now, going over what they had found out at the correction center. Which was absolutely nothing.

"Sam's right, Dean," Bobby chimed in. "The kid probably heard it wrong, or even if that's what Abasi called him... we have no way of knowing how far out of his mind the guy was."

Dean ran his hands through his hair. "You are not listening," he tried again. "There was no mother; I read the report, the blood on the kid when he was found in that dumpster as a baby was from Abasi. They compared the two when the kid killed him and it was perfect match!"

Bobby scratched his beard. Looked at Sam.

They both knew that Dean wanted to believe that a normal kid could come out of this, but all the evidence pointed the other way.

A human baby needs two humans of different genders to be conceived; mix a human and anything else, and the result is that 'anything else'. It was that way with werewolves, it was that way with shapeshifters, it was that way with every known monster that they knew and that bred. Granted, they didn't knew much about this monster in particular, but some laws were unchangeable.

One kid repeating the ramblings of a scared-to-death man before he was gunned down was hardly enough to prove otherwise.

"God knows how that kid was born, Dean," Bobby tried to reason. "There is all sorts of reasons why Abasi's blood could be on him. Doesn't mean a man gave birth to him... that stuff's just not possible, son."

Dean didn't look convinced. His hand kept scratching at his belly, twitching as he paced the room back and forth. "You don't know that... you have no way of knowing that," he kept on saying, his head shaking from side to side.

"This ain't '_Junior_'," Bobby said quietly. "And you ain't Arnold."

Dean gave a soft smile, a forced one. "So, we're back to square one?"

Sam bit his lip, stopping himself from saying 'yes'. "We can dig up Abasi's body and see if we can find some clue..." he offered lamely.

There was no way that something that had happened almost ten years ago could give them some sort of clue now. Whatever had happened on the day that Abasi's abdomen busted opened had gone to the grave with Abasi. Unless...

"Whatever it was that came out of Abasi, it came out bloody... there has to be some sort of medical record, right?" Sam went on, thinking out loud. "I mean, the man survived, so someone must've helped him."

Bobby scrunched his nose, like there was something stinky in the air. He doubted that Abasi would've gone to any official and proper medical place for something like this. More likely than not, he had just showed up at the hospital, bleeding, and was treated as any other trauma victim. "Maybe Dean should shoot it."

There was a pause in the room, silence so heavy that it weighed down on the air itself.

"What!" Sam hissed, not really sure if he'd heard the older man right.

"You heard me," Bobby went on, completely undisturbed by the storm in Sam's eyes. He was painfully aware, however, that he was suggesting the exact same thing that Dean had tried to do a month back. "The only one who can do it is Dean himself, we saw that... and if the thing is dead, it can't bust out of him."

Sam hated the sense that that made. "Dean's not shooting himself!"

"Look at him, Sam! That thing inside him is growing bigger and bigger each day," Bobby yelled back, face red. "When it's ready to bust out it's gonna rip him apart and the damage will be a whole lot worse then!"

"Dean puts a bullet in it, and we can't take him to the hospital to pull that bullet out!" Sam pointed out, face just as red as Bobby's. "He'll bleed out! He'll die!"

"It's the only way!"

"ENOUGH! BOTH OF YOU!"

Both Sam and Bobby stuttered to a stop, realizing at the same time what they had been doing. Neither could quite meet Dean's eyes.

"I'm the one with this thing inside," Dean reminded them, something that was so painfully obvious that neither should need the reminder. "I'm the one who can feel it move inside me every fucking moment of the day," he confessed, his eyes looking sternly from one family member to the other, daring either to interrupt him. "And I will be the one to kill it before it has a chance of breathing air— stop, Sam, lemme finish," Dean said, hand raised to stop Sam's words of protest even before they left his mouth. "Either way, that was what I intended to do before Bobby even suggested it. I'll wait until the last possible moment, but when that moment comes, I don't want to be hearing either of you yelling at the other about what should and shouldn't be done because, ultimately, it's my call. We clear?"

Sam wanted to voice his disagreement. There was no way that he would stand by and watch as Dean pointed a gun at himself and shot at point blank range. He would never survive something like that.

Bobby nodded, even though it was clear that he was against waiting any longer. The suspicious looks he kept giving Dean's middle made it look like he was expecting a beast to jump out of there at any given minute.

"We clear?" Dean asked again when no one voiced an answer.

"We're clear."

"Yeah."

"Good," Dean finished with a sad smile, resting his eyes on both of them. "I wouldn't want any other two by my side when the time comes. Thank you."

If either Sam or Bobby found the words strange, they didn't say it. But both understood them when, in the next morning, they found that Dean had left during the night.

/(O|O)\\

Dean drove until his eyes could no longer stay open; he drove until his back was sore and his legs numb; he drove until he ran out of road. And then he drove some more.

/(O|O)\\

The place smelled of mould and piss and somewhere at a distance, Dean could hear the tell-tale pingping of rusty and leaky pipes. The whole thing screamed unsanitary even to the blind.

It was as far from ideal as any place could get, but it was within walking distance from the ratty motel room where he'd been staying, where he had left the Impala, and, despite being abandoned, it still had electricity. Dean was pretty sure that he would never be able to do what he was about to do in the dark.

He pulled a crate behind the door he'd forced to break inside. The last thing Dean needed was someone walking in on what was about to become as much of an horror movie as Dean could imagine.

The thought of what he needed to do next and the uncertainties surrounding it, made Dean's heart race, trying to torpedo its way out of his mouth.

He could do this, Dean convinced himself; he just needed to stay calm and cool headed and everything would go just fine. At least, that was the monologue that he'd been keeping in his head for the past days. Ever since the cramps in his stomach had started.

He still hadn't managed to completely buy it.

The red jeans kid was sitting on top of a pile of crates, the angle defying the law of gravity. And yet, he looked at ease, blue sneakers dangling in the air, gentle eyes fixed on Dean. "It's okay… You're doing great."

Dean masked his face. He hoped that, when it was over, he would still have the strength to do what was necessary, if it came to that.

In his heart, Dean wanted to believe that the baby would turn out human, that there was no way he wouldn't have felt it if he had been carrying a monster inside him. His brain, however, Dean kept hearing Bobby and Sam's voices, telling him that it was genetically impossible for that kid to be anything _but_ a monster. That this was nothing but the Popobawa's way of breeding, of getting more sick fucks like itself into the world.

He might have served as an unwilling, free fuck and a fucking incubator for that monster, but there was no way that Dean was going to help that thing grow in numbers.

It didn't matter that he kept seeing a sweet little boy that reminded Dean of Sam when he was a kid. For all Dean knew, it was some sort of defense mechanism that the monster had passed on to its offspring, something to make gullible sad fucks like Dean fall for it and start thinking of that thing inside of him as a 'son' instead of a thing.

Dean wasn't that gullible.

Peter's face, however, kept coming back to Dean's mind whenever he was sure that the kid in his visions was just a gamble, a ruse to fool him into letting it see the light of day.

Peter, the eight year old murderer who hadn't had a single chance in life at being happy because the one person who should've protected him, had thrown him away to a dumpster.

*_ Your deepest wishes are now granted. Enjoy the gift I have bestowed you *_

Along with the fucking insistence that Dean told Sam what had happened, those had been the only words that the Popobawa had said to Dean.

*_ Your deepest wishes are now granted. Enjoy the gift I have bestowed you *_

At the time, Dean had thought that the thing was just mocking him humiliating him even further by implying that Dean wanted to be raped, wanted to be used and abused like that.

Seeing Peter had reminded Dean of another possible meaning for those words.

One that Dean had never dared to voice in his life. One that he wasn't even aware he had until he saw Ben, Lisa's son.

That think had just been fucking with his mind, Dean wanted to convince himself.

With a bad taste lingering in his mouth, Dean went about searching for the best spot, somewhere dry and with plenty of light, somewhere out of sight from the door but not too far that it would make it impossible for them to be found eventually. Dean's whole plan revolved around Sam finding them... after.

Up on the crates, the kid was smiling at Dean. He couldn't help but smile back. The little boy looked so peaceful up there, gently swinging his legs, hands spread at his side and gripping the edge of the box, patiently waiting on Dean. The kid wasn't scared, and that somehow quietened Dean's heart.

The respite was broken by a flash of pain across Dean's stomach. He doubled over, helpless against the whimper that escaped his lips. The pain was getting worse with each time it struck and Dean knew he was running out of time.

When he finally managed to open his eyes without seeing white spots, Dean found himself looking at little splashes of water on the cement floor, droplets of sweat dripping from his face and down his nose.

Taking a deep breath that helped to push the pain away for now, Dean wiped his face on the sleeve of his jacket and pushed forward.

The space between two large crates, one of them broken down into pieces, looked as good as any and Dean settled his bag down with a tired sigh. Opening it, Dean pulled out the blanket he'd stolen from the motel and tossed it on the floor. It wouldn't do much for warmth but it would provide some protection from the filth.

Next, Dean pulled out the knife he'd sharpened and cleaned, specifically for this event. The blade was still slightly blue from the fire Dean had used to sterilize it. The clean straps of cloth and the pressure bandages that he'd lifted from the first aid kit, those Dean left inside the bag. There was no place clean enough around him to set them down and he very much doubted he would be conscious enough by the end to actually use them.

Dean took off his jacket and set his cell phone on top of it, within hands' reach, on the ground.

He had no illusions about his chances of surviving this. Once he started cutting, Dean knew he wouldn't be able to stop the bleeding on his own. But if the kid was human... if the kid was human he would be a Winchester and Dean's last shred of strength would go to make sure that the child would be found by his family. Found by Sam.

The last thing that Dean wanted was for this kid to become another Peter.

The next wave of pain that hit Dean was bad enough to drive him to his knees.

"It's time, daddy."

Dean's heart skipped a beat at hearing those words. It was the first time that the vision called him that outside of a dream. The first time that it acknowledged what Dean had been trying to deny since he had first seen that kid disappearing under the rear wheels of the Impala.

Dean found out with a growing sense of regret that he liked the sound of that word.

Daddy.

Pulling himself back to the task at hand, Dean turned and sat against the wall. His fingers were sweaty and shaking when he grabbed the hem of his shirt to pull it off. Without the barrier of clothing, Dean had no other choice but see the swell in his stomach in its full, naked goriness.

The shirt landed with a wet sound not far from him, sweat soaked, and Dean pulled the knife into his lap. The blade was sharp enough to cut through a sheet of paper. It would have no problem breaking through his stretched out skin and muscles.

The bottle of whiskey that he lifted from Bobby's shelf was already opened and Dean poured some of the amber liquid over the knife. He did the same with the skin of his stomach, shivering as the cold hit hot flesh.

He knew he shouldn't, but Dean still took a couple of swings out of that bottle after disinfecting both knife and skin. It did nothing for his shaking hands, but the burning taste of alcohol, the only thing he'd managed to swallow for the past couple of days, was enough to make his eyes water and dull the panic ever so slightly.

Dean forced himself to look back at the distended flesh in his middle. It was frightening how much it had expanded in the last few days. Dean knew that whatever it was that was growing inside of him wouldn't have a normal baby's gestation time. This wasn't a pregnancy; this wasn't even a baby as far as he could guess. Just a growth so big that his belly button was all but gone and he couldn't even see the rim of jeans to find out if he was wearing a belt or not. Dean couldn't really remember taking off his clothes since leaving Bobby's place.

Something shifted beneath his translucent skin and Dean's breath faltered inside his chest. If he squinted, Dean could almost see the shape of an arm, the mound of a foot. Just a few days ago, that sight would've scared the crap out of him. Now, it urged Dean to grip the knife tighter and poise the tip gently against his stomach.

He tried to visualize the path the blade would have to cut, how deep he'll have to push the knife in. He tried to prepare himself for the blood that would start pouring down as soon as he made the first cut.

Dean visualized it all, but he still couldn't make himself move.

It wasn't pain that worried him. It was the unknown factors; the things he could not control and that made him pant and shake at the possibilities. It was the remembrance of Sam and Bobby being so sure that Dean was carrying a monster; it was the doubt that he might've been wrong and they right; it was the fear of them being wrong and he would push the blade in too deeply and hurt the being inside.

Dean closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It took only a small push for the tip of the blade to break skin, so gently that Dean barely felt it. When he opened his eyes again, sweat stinging his sight, Sam was standing over him.

"What the hell?"

Sam's presence startled Dean almost to the point of dropping the knife. He would have dropped it, had not Sam's hands grabbed on to his, keeping trembling fingers and blade both trapped and secured.

Dean turned confused eyes to his brother. The pain, stronger than ever, hit again, stealing his breath before Dean could voice any question. This time, Dean was sure that the pain alone would kill him before he had a chance of doing anything else.

It was blinding.

All consuming.

Never ending.

"It's okay, Dean," Sam's voice seemed to come from deep within a deep well and Dean could barely understand the words. The meaning, however, was soothing enough. "It's okay... I gottcha."

When Dean could convince his lungs to do their job and take a frigging breath, it was Sam's smell that surrounded him. Gone were the stink of stifling mould and the smell of piss and decay, replaced by gunpowder and cheap laundry detergent.

Dean could feel Sam's hands on his shoulders, could feel Sam's shoulder under his head. It took him awhile to put two and two together and realize that Sam was really there and that they were practically hugging each other on the dirty floor of an abandoned warehouse.

"Wha—What the hell are you doing here?" Dean asked, voice hitching with the remembrance of pain as he pulled away from Sam's comforting touch.

Looking at Sam's wandering eyes, Dean resisted the urge to cover himself up.

It was absurd, of course, to think that Sam wouldn't know what was happening if Dean still had his shirt on; it was foolish to think that Sam wouldn't know how large Dean's belly was, how deformed the monster had made him, if there was a simple layer of clothing covering him. Never the less, Dean still wished he still had his baggy shirt on, keeping himself hidden from the looks that Sam was giving him now.

It was understandable, to some point, all the staring. The last time his brother had seen him, Dean had been sporting what could have been confused with a beer belly...

There was nothing dubious about the round shape that he now displayed, nothing to have doubts about when there was something definitely _moving_ under that distended skin.

"You really didn't expect me to let you go through this alone, did you?" Sam voice, finally forcing his gaze off Dean's swollen stomach to his face. His tone was light, almost matter-of-fact, but there was nothing casual about the emotions in his eyes. Understanding, compassion, loyalty, love... "I couldn't fix the Impala properly, but I do know enough to install a GPS tracking device," Sam added with a wink. "First thing I did, actually."

Dean sagged in relief. He would never admit it out loud, but the last thing Dean wanted was to go through his last hours on Earth alone, stranded from his brother, having ran off in the middle of the night like a thieve. "You can't use the knife," Dean reminded him. "It's not safe."

Sam's eyes dropped to the ground, guilt coloring his cheeks. "I know," he whispered, remembering all too well that the reason for that was because if the spell he'd made. "I can still help. I _want_ to help, however this turns out."

Dean nodded, understanding that Sam was ready to give this creature the benefit of doubt alongside with Dean. The fact was that, now that Sam was there, Dean felt more at ease, more confident that they could pull this off. Now he could be sure that, no matter what happened to him, Sam would be there to make sure that everyone else would be safe.

Truth was, Dean was just glad that Sam wasn't there to stop him. "Bobby?"

Sam smiled briefly. "Outside, waiting in the truck."

He was backup. Sam didn't needed to put it into words for Dean to know that Bobby was one shout away from coming inside to deal with the monster's baby himself if there was need for that. He was insurance, even if his looming presence felt more reassuring than menacing.

Tightening his grip on the handle of the knife as Sam removed his, Dean looked up, trapping his brother in his gaze. "I need you to promise me something Sam," Dean said, waiting for Sam's small nod before going on. "If... if by any chance this—" he stopped, breath catching in his chest, words escaping his min. "If I don't make it and this turns out to be a regular, normal kid," Dean said it all in one go, not giving Sam a chance to interrupt, not giving himself a chance to doubt what he was asking. "Promise me that he won't have the same fate as Peter did."

Sam gulped. In the silence of the empty warehouse, it was easy to actually hear the blob of spit and words that Sam forced down his throat.

Dean could see that Sam wanted nothing to do with promises that involved a dead Dean... but Sam could also see how important this was for Dean.

The hand grasping his shoulder was steady, strong. Solid rock on which Dean could depend on. "I promise, Dean."

Dean smiled softly, his hand reaching up to cover Sam's. "Okay, then," Dean said with a tight smile that barely covered his nervousness. "Let's get this show on the road."

Sam gave his shoulder one final squeeze and move to support Dean from behind. The position hadn't been discussed or planned, but both knew that Dean would feel more comfortable going through this without looking Sam in the eye.

Besides... the second that Dean's shaking muscles had made contact with Sam's chest, Sam knew he'd taken the right course of action. There was no way that Dean would've been able to keep himself upright once he started cutting.

"Please... hurry," the kid begged, having jumped off the crate to the floor at some point. His eyes were no longer gentle and smiling; he seemed to be in as much pain as Dean was.

Dean didn't stop to think or ponder this time around. He just clenched his teeth to stop himself from screaming and pressed the knife down.

It was at the same time sickening and fascinating to watch the ease with which the blade slid across the expanse of Dean's belly, a crescendo of blood chasing it like a hungry hound.

Dean felt, at the same time, hot and cold. He forced himself to look at what he was doing, watching the way muscle parted under his touch, a zipper opening wider and wider as the blade progressed.

The sense of detachment lasted exactly a couple of seconds before the pain registered. Dean just bit down on his lip harder, eyes focused on the task at hand. His body might've finally realized what was happening, but Dean wasn't about to allow his mind to act upon it.

The knife was slippery, Dean's hands covered in sweat and blood. Despite his best efforts, Dean was losing control. "Sam..."

"You're doing great, Dean," Sam's voice reached his ears, disembodied, rock solid and unwavering. Realizing what Dean was asking, Sam wasted no time. His hands closed around Dean's, making sure that the knife wouldn't slip from his weakening grip. "Almost done now, almost there."

Dean swallowed the bile in his mouth and kept on cutting. It felt like he'd already ripped miles into his own skin, but every time he looked, he could see that the cut still wasn't big enough to take the creature out.

Sweat and tears pooled over his eyes and Dean looked around, searching for the kid, but he couldn't see him anywhere. His breath speeding, Dean fought down the despair, fought down the fear. He held onto the pain to keep him focused. It was the only thing that he could use to keep cutting, keep moving forward.

That, and the solid presence of his brother at his back. The reassuring warmth of Sam's fingers over his.

Dean stopped only when the blade scrapped against the hipbone on the opposite side of where he'd started. He screamed then, stars flashing in his vision in bursts of light. Dean was sure that he'd blacked out for a couple of seconds.

Sam was calling his name when he came back. "Dean! Come on, man... you're so close now," he kept on yelling, his hands now the only thing keeping Dean upright and the knife in his hands. "Don't give up now!"

"Sam... I can't," Dean whispered, out of breath. He was out of energy. Out of strength. Out of will to do anything.

Dean could feel blood soaking the hem of his jeans, could feel it pooling and congealing on the floor around the two of them. He'd gotten this far, the path was open... but he couldn't find the willpower to cross the finish line.

Dean's mouth tasted of copper. It tasted of defeat.

The world shifted around him and Dean was sure that this was it, this was the end.

It surprised him when he opened his eyes again and found himself lying on his back, nothing but the roughness of the blanket he'd put on the ground. For some reason, the blanket smelled of sawdust.

He was cold. Missing was the heat of Sam's body from behind him. The sawdust blanket made for a very poor substitute.

Dean wondered where Sam was, if he had gone out to call Bobby, if he had simply gone away. Dean's eyes could barely focus on more than the distant ceiling and he could hear nothing above the pounding of his own heart. He was alone.

One blink, and Sam was right there, in front of him, hands red with blood and fingers disappearing inside Dean's stomach.

Dean could see Sam's lips moving, could see the taunt muscles in his forearms.

"Almost done, Dean," Sam said, focused look in his face like this was something he did every day. "Just stay with me a little longer, okay?"

Dean thought he nodded, but he got distracted from the motion when his chin touched his chest and he caught sight of what was being done to his body.

Through his blurring eyes, Dean could've sworn that he had seen a tiny hand, pink or just plainly covered in blood, reaching out from inside him towards Sam.

Dean couldn't help but smile, tears falling from his eyes when his head fell back down, all strength depleted.

It had been a human hand.

Tiny, human fingers instead of wings, skin instead of leather. He sagged in relief.

It was short lived.

Sam gave him no warning, but Dean knew it was his brother's hands that he was sensing when he felt his insides shifting aside and something as big as a honey melon being pulled from inside of him.

Dean couldn't stop the scream that tore from deep within him. Through the haze of his pain, Dean faintly recognized that he wasn't the only one screaming.

A cry, far less pained and much more hopeful was coming from somewhere else. From someone else.

The blare of a newborn baby was an odd thing to hear in the midst of that scenario, but for those involved, it was the sweetest thing to hear.

It sounded like life, like humanity. It sounded normal despite everything that had brought them to that place.

Dean's head slid to the side, tears of pain and happiness mixing together and taking advantage of gravity to fall faster and harder.

The little kid from so many times before, the one Dean had never bothered to ask for a name because he knew it to be an illusion, was there too, looking back at Dean.

"Hi, daddy," he whispered, luminous green eyes bright with happiness, sweet voice barely audible above the wails of the crying baby. "I'll see you soon."

It was the last thing Dean heard as he closed his eyes and finally let go.

/(O|O)\\

Sam thought that arriving to find the Impala abandoned in a motel's parking lot with Dean nowhere in sight, was the most frightening thing that he could experience that day. The feeling of his heart beating inside his tight throat, as he and Bobby searched the nearest buildings for one where Dean might be hidden, had made it impossible for him to breath, for him to think until they had finally found Dean.

From the moment he stepped out of Bobby's truck, leaving the older man behind with a heavy look, Sam tried not to think about what would happen once he got inside that warehouse. And how wrong he had been about truly frightening things.

Deep down, Sam knew that_ this_ would be on the menu. Well, not the specifics, but he was sure that there would be blood, and pain and images seared into his brain that he would rather have never seen in his life.

But, given that the alternative was to let Dean go through it all on his own, Sam had figured that his choice was made from the start.

Now it was just a matter of not stopping for a second to think about what he was doing or where his hands currently were. Because, if for even one second, Sam acknowledged the fact that he was up to his wrists inside Dean's guts and that there was something in there, _frigging moving_, Sam might just throw up right there and then.

The latex gloves he had hastily put on had all but turned a glistening red mess and now that he was here, Sam regretted that he hadn't packed more than one pair. That pair of gloves, the sewing needle and thread had been the only things that he'd had time to grab once they'd gotten Dean's location.

Sam didn't wanted to think about the spell and how it wouldn't let him sew up Dean after the thing was out. He was lucky enough that, once the cut was made, he had been able to move in and finish what Dean was no longer strong enough to do. Any use of thread and needle would, like the knife, have to be by Dean's hands.

Looking at the size of the cut that Dean had tore opened across his abdomen, Sam was sure that, even if Dean could muster up the energy and consciousness to stitch himself up, Sam hadn't brought enough thread anyway.

Grabbing the little monster inside Dean was like trying to hold on to a greased up football with numb fingers. Everything was slippery, everything was slipping and Sam didn't dare increase the strength of his hold, fearful of crushing something.

Dean had left them because they wouldn't listen when he said that there was a chance this would be a human baby. Dean had fought for this thing, defended its right to at least be born before they decided if it was a monster or not. Sam wouldn't put it all in jeopardy just because his clumsy fingers had screwed up.

Still, he was fully prepared to look at his hands and find himself holding a leathery, winged, one-eyed little monster.

When his hands finally pulled free of Dean's body – and God, Sam couldn't really be paying attention to that now, or to the scream that he'd ripped from Dean's throat, or even to the fact that Dean's eyes were no longer open - Sam stared at what his hands were holding.

Reddish, wrinkled skin, fuzzy blond hair, toothless mouth opened in a mighty blare that should've been harrowing to Sam's ears but that only registered as joy and tiny hands that were holding onto Sam's fingers with all of their tiny might.

A baby.

He was holding a real. Human. Baby.

A human baby that he'd just pulled from inside his brother. His very much male brother.

Somehow, in the midst of all the zombies and demons, and ghosts and shapeshifters and frigging vampires, that little being in his hands struck Sam as the oddest thing he had ever seen.

At the back of his mind, Sam chose to ignore the origins of that child, chose to put aside that it was the result of Dean's assault, that it was the physical evidence that Dean would never be the same man again.

All that registered was that he was holding a tiny life, a tiny Winchester and that Dean had played a part in creating that new being. All ten fingers, ten toes and little weener of beautiful life.

Realizing the cold temperature of the place, Sam quickly wrapped the little boy in his own jacket. The kid's cries quietened down almost immediately as the warmth registered, big grey eyes looking up for the first time and staring at Sam.

Sam couldn't help but smile, disarmed at such innocence looking up at him. He wanted to share the good news with Dean, showing that he had been right all along. Sam looked at his brother and his smile died on his lips.

Dean was a mess.

There was too much blood, soaking the blanket that Dean had placed on the floor; too much blood outside than any body could ever support... Dean's skin was too pale, too ashen to be healthy.

Sam looked in between the child in his arms and his brother, who he couldn't even tell if he was breathing. Dean didn't look like he was breathing, and Sam's own breath was caught inside his chest.

It took it him precious time, time that Dean didn't have, for Sam to remember that Bobby was just outside, waiting for him to call for help.

When, at last, Sam had his hands free to put two fingers on Dean's throat, in search of a heartbeat, deep down Sam already knew that he wasn't going to find one.

* * *

AN: and roar of outrage in 3... 2... 1... ROAAARRRRRR!

*g*

Does it help if I say that an Epilogue will be coming up in less than an hour?

Once again, many thanks to Amber1960 for her swift beta-read and all around precious help. Any remaning mistakes, as always, are mine.


	14. Epilogue

EPI/(O|O)\\LOGUE

The smell of freshly cut grass was heavy in the air and the breeze that circled around was soft enough to refresh heated skin without stealing any of the warmth of the bright sun above.

Children's laughter painted the air with sparkling colors, the carefree giggles of pure joy punctuated by the deeper laughs of adults. Some where at a distance, too far to actually see the animal, but still near enough to hear its bark, a dog sounded about as happy as everyone else.

There was a radio playing somewhere, gentle music notes floating aimlessly, spreading some song about summer rain and lemons.

The shaggy haired giant beneath the willow tree could only be Sam, even though he looked nothing like the Sam he remembered.

Well… he had the same hair, the same height, the same ratty jeans and worn tennis shoes. He even had one of those embarrassing Sam-shirts that no other man would dare to wear.

The big difference was his face. This Sam looked… happy.

Light.

Dean remembered this. He remembered dreaming of precisely this, weeks before...

"You're just gonna stand there like a creepy stalker or are you actually gonna go over there and say hello?"

Dean looked over his shoulder. Bobby was smiling, something the older man still hadn't been able to stop doing after Dean had passed all the tests that he had come up with to prove that Dean was truly who he said he was.

Dean looked back at the sunny scene. Sam wasn't alone.

But unlike with the dream, he wasn't playing softball with a kid. The kid on Sam's lap wasn't old enough to walk yet, much less throw ball.

Everything was so familiar, and yet so new to him. The grass beneath his boots; the bark of the tree under his fingers; the sun, beating down warmly down his exposed neck. The baby's giggle that traveled all the way from where Sam was seating under the tree to where Dean and Bobby were hidden, watching.

"I'm gonna scare them half to death," Dean voiced. He felt shyer than he had ever felt in his life. "Sam looks happy. Maybe I should just—"

"Sure you're gonna scare the crap out Sam," Bobby agreed with a smirk. "And he might dunk you in holy water before he believes it's really you, Dean," he said. Lord knew that opening his front door and catching an eyeful of Dean, who was supposed to be dead, covered in sweat and dirt, smiling back at him had almost made Bobby crap his pants. "But nothing will make those two more happy than seeing you alive."

Dean looked down, unsure about what to do. "What did he name him?"

Bobby grinned, a fond look in his eyes that spoke of many nights holding that kid, feeding him formula bottles and changing his smelly diapers. "Robert John," he said with a proud glint to his eyes. "He figured you would like that."

It was Dean's turn to smile. He did. It was the perfect name for his s— "What is he like?" Dean found himself asking. He had barely any recollection of the baby before dying, only a vague notion that he was okay and that he was human.

"Lil'Bobby? He's a sweet kid, quiet as an angel," Bobby said, sounding more like a proud grandfather than the gruff hunter that he was. "He kept Sam and me sane after... you know," he added more seriously, sad eyes meetings Dean's. "It was hard, Dean... hardest thing ever, to go on with life knowing that, after all we'd done, you had still gone to Hell. Every stinky piece of low scum demon that we hunted after your death took pride in telling us where you were, what was happening to you—" Bobby stopped himself.

Dean had assured Bobby that he had no recollection of what had happened to him after he'd bleed to death in that abandoned warehouse. There was no point in putting nasty images in his head now. "He kept us grounded, gave us something to focus... in a way, it was like having you around."

"And he's..." Dean bit his lip. "He is human, right? You're sure of it?"

"A hundred percent Winchester, according to the tests Sam had him do," Bobby assured him. "A hundred percent you, actually," he added, "given that the DNA test was a perfect match to you."

"So, he's what... my clone?"

"He's your son, Dean," Bobby stated, the assertion leaving no room for more questions. "Go to them," Bobby said again, gently shoving Dean forward.

And Dean went.

/(O|O)\\

The man wearing a trench coat in the middle of the hot, summer afternoon seemed unaffected by the heat of the sun as he watched the Winchesters' reunion.

"We are wasting time," his companion, dressed in a similar fashion, pointed out impatiently. "He has a job to do, one that does not include baby sitting abominations like that child and that brother of his."

"Quiet," the man in the trench coat said, his blue eyes fixed on the scene up ahead. "There is time still... for now, let us allow Dean Winchester have at least this. "

The end

* * *

AN- Alrighty then, this is it! I would like to leave here my renewed and deepest thanks to **Greeneyes_fan** and **Amber1960**, who took over when my beta could not; my deepest thanks to my beta, **Jackfan2**, for all the support and work she put into this for over a year and to **Farscapefan**, the generous fan who decided to donate to the Doctors Without Borders cause in the name of fandom, Jared and Jensen and, in doing so, pushed me outside of my comfort zone and into this dark and delicious tale of loss, pain, forgiveness and hope.

To all that have stood with me this far, my sincere thank you. It was a pleasure to write this for all of you *bows*


End file.
